Why Is MIT Making Robot Insects?

From the creator

What happens when you shrink robots down to the size of insects? Let’s explore the mind-bending physics behind their superpowers! Engineers get Onshape Professional free up to 6 months: go to https://www.onshape.pro/veritasium to create CAD models and bring your ideas to life. ▀▀▀ 00:00 The Problem Of Surface Tension 3:16 How Does A Bee Fly? 7:08 What Powers Something So Small? 8:16 Tiny Muscles 10:36 Pogo Sticks On Mars 11:27 Mini Search Parties 13:29 Swarms Of Spybots 15:55 Penny Sized Combustion Engines 18:40 Science For Science’s Sake ▀▀▀ A massive thank you to Kevin Chen and the Soft and Micro Robotics Laboratory at MIT. for hosting us and showcasing their incredible robots. Do check out their paper Acrobatics at Insect Scale: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adp4256 We’re incredibly grateful to Mechanical Engineering at Cornell and the Harvard Microrobotics Lab for their groundbreaking work that informed much of what we’ve shared here. Special thanks to Pakpong Chirarattananon and Cameron Aubin for their expertise and insights into mini-robot science. CORRECTION: The scale bar at 18:19 is wrong. It should be 2cm, not 2mm. Thanks @nicolaszaugg5825 for pointing it out. ▀▀▀ If you’re looking for a molecular modeling kit, try Snatoms, a kit I invented where the atoms snap together magnetically. https://snatoms.com/ Sign up to the Veritasium newsletter for weekly science updates - https://ve42.co/Newsletter References: https://ve42.co/botsrefs Video

Published 2025-01-21 · Watch on YouTube ↗
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