Beetle-mounted camera offers unique insights

The camera, which streams video to a smartphone at 1-to-5 frames per second, sits on a mechanical arm that can pivot 60 degrees. This allows a viewer to capture a high-resolution, panoramic shot or track a moving object while expending a minimal amount of energy. To demonstrate the system, which weighs about 250mg the team at the University of Washington mounted it on top of live beetles and insect-sized robots. The results are published in Science Robotics.

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"We have created a low-power, low-weight, wireless camera system that can capture a first-person view of what's happening from an actual live insect or create vision for small robots," said senior author Shyam Gollakota, a UW associate professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. "Vision is so important for communication and for navigation, but it's extremely challenging to do it at such a small scale.”