Cyborg beetle for deciphering insect flight

The fusion of a living beetle and a tiny control backpack, also known as cyborg beetle, enables insect free-flight study. Using such a system, researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and University of Freiburg, Germany found the roles of a flight muscle in regulating body’s orientations of the insect in free flight.

The recent paper, published on May 4th in the journal of Cyborg and Bionic Systems, showed that subalar muscle, a major direct flight muscle, of the beetle has the roles in manipulating wing rotation angle to adjust body angles and accelerations of the insect in free flight.

Evaluating the function of a flight muscle

The giant flower beetles, Mecynorrhina torquate, with averaged length of 6 centimeters and weight of 8 grams were used for the experiments. The researchers found that the beetle activated the subalar muscles and increased the wing rotation angle when watching movies of backward moving stripes in tethered condition. The wireless backpack equipped with an inertial measurement unit (IMU) (~1.6 grams) was then mounted on the beetle. Two pair of electrodes were connected to the subalar muscles for electrical stimulation in free-flight experiments.

“The free-flight experiments are important to study insect flight as the tethered condition would interfere the natural motions of the insects,” said T. Thang Vo-Doan, a Human Frontier Science Program Cross-disciplinary Fellow at the University of Freiburg.

During flight, the scientists commanded the system to activate individual left/ right muscle or both muscles at the same time to evaluate the roles of subalar muscle. When the left/ right subalar muscle was stimulated, the beetle yawed and rolled to the opposite side of the stimulation. Stimulating both subalar muscles at the same time, the researchers was able to control the beetle to pitch up and brake in mid-air.

“The new study demonstrated the role of subalar muscle in manipulating wing rotation angle is different from regulating wing beat amplitude of the basalar and third axillary muscles, the other major direct flight muscles,” said Vo-Doan. “It also leads to a new challenge of controlling multiple muscles to achieve more complex flight maneuvers of the insects in free-flight.”

The authors of the paper include T. Thang Vo-Doan, V. Than Dung, and Hirotaka Sato.

This work was partly supported by the Singapore Ministry of Education (RG140/20) and SPring-8 in Japan with the approval of the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (Nos. 2015A1502, 2015B1449, 2016A1169, 2016B1492, 2017A1087, 2017B1464, 2018A1087, and 2018B1261).

The paper, " A Cyborg Insect Reveals a Function of a Muscle in Free Flight," was published in the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems on May 4, 2022, at DOI: https://doi.org/10.34133/2022/9780504

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Reference

Authors: T. Thang Vo-Doan^1,2, V. Than Dung¹, Hirotaka Sato¹

1 Nanyang Technological University, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Singapore

2 University of Freiburg, Institute of Biology I, Germany

Title of original paper: A Cyborg Insect Reveals a Function of a Muscle in Free Flight

Journal: Cyborg and Bionic Systems

DOI: https://doi.org/10.34133/2022/9780504

About authors:

Prof. Hirotaka Sato’s personal webpage: https://hirosatontu.wordpress.com/

Dr. T. Thang Vo-Doan’s personal webpage: https://tthangvodoan.wordpress.com/