The first generation of robotic bees were designed to be very bee-like, featuring two flapping wings at bee scale. After all, bees can do a lot with two wings, so why can’t robots? Turns out there are a lot of reasons why little winged robots can’t do what bees do, at least for now—things like yaw control has proved to be somewhat tricky, which is one reason why less explicitly bee-like designs that use four wings instead of two are appealing. 

We saw some impressive research at ICRA this year showing that yaw control with two wings is possible, but four wings have additional advantages— namely, more wings means more power for lifting more stuff. And with more lifting power, it’s possible to have a completely self-contained robot insect, even if it’s slightly weird looking.

In Nature this week, researchers from Harvard’s Microrobotics Lab, led by Professor Robert J. Wood, are presenting a four-winged version of their RoboBee platform. They are calling this version RoboBee X-Wing, and it’s capable of untethered flight thanks to solar cells and a light source that would put high noon(s) on Tatooine to shame.