Consecutive jumping control of a locust biobot via thoracic nerve stimulation

Abstract

The study of bio-robotics has received increasing attention. There have been very successful cases in crawling and flight control, while there is still a lack of consecutive path following control in jumping. Herein, we demonstrated a cyborg locust via nerve stimulation, which can achieve consecutive jumping control with an average distance of $\sim345$ mm and an average height of $\sim63$ mm. By investigating the neural activity, an electrical pulse train regarding the nerve signal was designed to induce the strong leg kick of a locust. The power consumption of the stimulation is only 2.86 mW. The achievement of developing bio-robotics would promote and accelerate the applications in environmental surveillance and search-and-rescue mission.