![]() We also demonstrated around 20 degrees of contralateral yaw and roll by stimulating individual subalar muscle. While turning control was already achieved by stimulating basalar and 3Ax muscles, electrical stimulation of subalar muscles resulted in braking and elevation control in flight. The beetle uses indirect flight muscles to drive wing flapping and three major direct flight muscles (basalar, subalar, and third axilliary (3Ax) muscles) to control the kinematics of the wings for flight maneuver. What if we would use living insect as platform for MAV instead? Here, we reported a flight control via electrical stimulation of a flight muscle of an insect-computer hybrid robot, which is the interface of a mountable wireless backpack controller and a living beetle. While engineers put lots of effort, resources, and time in building insect scale micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) that fly like insects, insects themselves are the real masters of flight. See Movies 5–7 in Supplementary Material for flight initiation and cessation control of fully tethered (Movie 5) and fully untethered (wireless communication, Movies 6 and 7) Mecynorrhina torquata. Number of waveforms was swept from 1 to 100 in one waveform increment when testing for the number of waveforms required to trigger flight initiation (Table 2 in Supplementary Material). (B) Pulse trains applied between left and right optic lobes. The whole audio amplitudes were normalized using mean absolute value calculated for the middle period of the flight time (2.5–3.7 s). The sharp rise of audio amplitude at the beginning of oscillation was attributed to friction between elytra and wings when the wings were unfolded from the underneath of elytra. τ3 and τ4 for all the tested beetles are summarized in Table 2 in Supplementary Material. Delay, τ4, is response time from beginning of the single pulse to ending of wing oscillation. Delay, τ3, is response time from beginning of the multi pulse trains to beginning of the wing oscillation. (A) Alternating positive and negative potential pulses (100 Hz, see (B) for the details of the waveform) applied between left and right optic lobes initiated wing oscillations while a single pulse ceased wing oscillations (top) audio recording of tethered beetle, (bottom) applied potential to the one side optic lobe regarding the other side optic lobe. Initiation and cessation control of Mecynorrhina torquata beetle tethered flight. Mecynorrhina torquata has nearly identical, scaled anatomy to Cotinis texana. The blue letters X and bars indicate implant sites and approximate implant lengths, respectively. The basalar muscle stimulator was implanted midway between sternum and notum of mesothorax to a depth of approximately 1 cm in rostral–caudal direction on either the left or right side of the insect. (F) Cross-section of mesothorax showing the basalar muscle stimulator sites (implant site 4 on left and right sides). (E) Sagittal section of thorax showing the counter electrode at implant site 3 and the basalar muscle stimulator at implant site 4. Implant site 2 was at the interior edge of each compound eye. The brain stimulator was implanted along the rostral–caudal midline of the head, at the center between the left and right compound eyes. ![]() (C) Front and (D) tilted views of dissected Cotinis beetle head showing the brain stimulator at implant site 1, optic lobe stimulator at implant site 2. The system consisted of a microcontroller, a custom PCB, a dipole antenna, a microbattery and stimulating wire electrodes (∅125 μm) implanted as in Cotinis. (B) Radio flight control system (∼1.3 g total) mounted on Mecynorrhina torquata using beeswax next to a US$ 0.25 coin. A microcontroller provided potential pulses to four stimulating wire electrodes (∅125 μm) implanted into the brain, left and right basalar muscles and posterior pronotum (counter electrode). (A) Tetherless flight control system (∼230 mg total) mounted on Cotinis texana (Green June Beetle) using beeswax next to a US$ 0.
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