Static electricity will help tiny flying robots perch anywhere

Flying can be exhausting when you're a tiny, bee-sized robot, but researchers from Harvard have created a new way to let little winged bots take a break. Using static electricity, robots no bigger than a quarter can latch onto the underside of any flat surfaces, a process that uses between 500 and 1,000 times less power than flying. In a study published in this week's issue of Science, researchers say this new perching ability could be key to creating insect-sized aerial robots that can help with a long-term observational tasks -- traffic control, to search-and-rescue. The mechanism was developed by researchers from Harvard for the RoboBee: a tiny flying robot first unveiled by a team from the university in 2013. The RoboBee weighs just 0.08 grams (that's 31 times lighter than a penny), and has a pair of tiny wings that can beat up to 120 times per second.