Light-driven dandelion-inspired microfliers

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 3036 - 10
• Main Authors: Chen, Yuanhao, Valenzuela, Cristian, Zhang, Xuan, Yang, Xiao, Wang, Ling, Feng, Wei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 26.05.2023; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/301/1005/1006; 639/301/923/1028; Actuators; Bimorphs; Energy efficiency; Environmental monitoring; Flight; Flight time; Humanities and Social Sciences; Insects; Light; Light sources; Micro air vehicles (MAV); multidisciplinary; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Seeds; Solar sails; Spacecraft; Wireless communications
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-38792-z

In nature, many plants have evolved diverse flight mechanisms to disperse seeds by wind and propagate their genetic information. Inspired by the flight mechanism of the dandelion seeds, we demonstrate light-driven dandelion-inspired microfliers based on ultralight and super-sensitive tubular-shaped bimorph soft actuator. Like dandelion seeds in nature, the falling velocity of the as-proposed microflier in air can be facilely controlled by tailoring the degree of deformation of the “pappus” under different light irradiations. Importantly, the resulting microflier is able to achieve a mid-air flight above a light source with a sustained flight time of ~8.9 s and a maximum flight height of ~350 mm thanks to the unique dandelion-like 3D structures. Unexpectedly, the resulting microflier is found to exhibit light-driven upward flight accompanied by autorotating motion, and the rotation mode can be customized in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction by engineering the shape programmability of bimorph soft actuator films. The research disclosed herein can offer new insights into the development of untethered and energy-efficient artificial aerial vehicles that are of paramount significance for many applications from environmental monitoring and wireless communication to future solar sail and robotic spacecraft. Insect-scale untethered micro aerial vehicles such as artificial dandelion devices suffer from high flight randomness and inadequate controllability. Chen et al. design and fabricate an untethered dandelion-inspired microflier, which is spatially and temporally controlled by an ultralight and supersensitive light-driven bimorph soft actuator.