Tiny pop-up robots combine origami and insects

Researchers have figured out how to make robotic bees using origami techniques that fold carbon and other materials together like a pop-up children's book. (Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory)

Researchers have figured out how to make robotic bees using origami techniques that fold carbon and other materials together like a pop-up children's book.

This new method will make it faster and cheaper to mass produce these tiny flying robots, perhaps allowing swarms of them to one day pollinate crops, investigate chemical spills or search for missing hikers.

"The robots themselves are an interesting goal," said Rob Wood, professor of electrical engineering at Harvard University. "But what gets us excited are the open scientific questions that we have to look into in the course of the research and the engineering challenges to get these things to work."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/29/tiny-pop-up-robots-combine-origami-and-insects/