The DragonflEye project aims to turn dragonflies into cyborg, remote-controlled drones

By Brian Santo, contributing writer

Step by step — or, perhaps more appropriately, wingflap by wingflap — researchers are closing in on being able to control living insects as if they were mechanical drones.

The latest advance, announced at the end of May, was getting a dragonfly to lift off while equipped with a harness fitted with electronics, sensors, and a solar cell.

Draper Laboratory is the home of the project, which it calls DragonflEye; the project was announced in January.

Mechanical drones are unquestionably easier to operate, but no artificial system is as small, light, stealthy, nor can fly with anything close to the efficiency and maneuverability of odonata anisoptera .

First Look: Behind-the-scenes with DragonflEye from Draper on Vimeo. 

For some time, researchers have been looking into the physical processes involved in the flight of various flying insects. They have mapped their nervous and sensory systems and learned how to identify and measure sensory input, impulses, and reactions. The Daniel Lab at the University of Washington, for example, has been investigating insect flight for over 20 years.

Trying to find ways to induce insects to act as drones is a notion that stretches back to World War II, but only in recent years with advances in microelectronics and discoveries in insect biology has the idea begun to approach practicality. Several organizations are attempting the backpack approach — among them, a team based at UC Berkeley, who has been working with large beetles.

Draper Lab is working with Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HMMI) at Janelia Research Campus. Researchers at HHMI have been investigating a type of cell that resembles a neuron in the nervous system of the dragonfly that contributes to the control of flight. This type of cell is called an interneuron because they are neither sensory nor motor, as one of the researchers explains in this interview with IEEE Spectrum . The researchers refer to these interneurons as steering neurons.

HHMI is applying techniques in synthetic biology to make these steering neurons sensitive to light by inserting genes similar to those naturally found in the eye directly into the dragonfly’s nervous system, according to the DragonflEye announcement .

Draper, meanwhile, is developing what it calls optrodes, devices that can “activate the steering neurons with pulses of light piped into the nerve cord from the dragonfly’s backpack.” The optrodes are an alternative to optical fiber, which the Lab said are too stiff to wrap around a dragonfly’s nerve cord. These optrodes will enable precise activation of specific steering cells without disrupting any of the thousands of nearby neurons, Draper Lab said.

The Draper/HHMI team has yet to successfully demonstrate the ability to control dragonfly flight with their combination of genetic engineering and optrode/nervous-system interface. But that’s the next wingflap.

The next step after proving that the approach can work would be evaluating the insects’ flight against the control inputs in order to develop effective control algorithms. Also, further miniaturization of the first-generation electromechanical harnesses, or backpacks, will allow the researchers to work with even smaller insects.

Applications could include using other insects for commercial pollination (compensating for the collapse of bee populations), environmental monitoring, search-and-rescue, and — of course — military reconnaissance.

Also, with further development, optrodes could have applications in human medical treatment, too, Draper Lab noted.