Researchers at the University of Washington build a GoPro-style camera for beetles

July 15, 2020 11:35am IST Source

    Researchers at the University of Washington, US have developed a tiny wireless camera to sit on the back of a beetle to get a view of the world from a bug's eyes. The device weighs just about 250 grams. It streams the video directly to the smartphone by a Bluetooth connection which has a range of about 120 meters. The video is streamed at one to five frames per second to the smartphone.

The camera is powered by a lithium-polymer battery. If the camera were continuously streaming, then the battery would have died within 1-2 hours. But to overcome this problem, an accelerometer was fixed in the setup. This accelerometer detected the beetle’s movements, and the camera recorded only while the insect was moving. With the accelerometer, the battery life was extended to about 6 hrs or more, depending on the movement of the beetle.

The researchers attached the backpack to two different species, the death-feigning beetle ( Asbolus laevis ) and the pinacate beetle ( Eleodes nigrina ). While carrying the camera, they were still able to easily traverse obstacles like rocks that were larger than them. To mimic an animal’s vision, the researchers used a tiny, ultra-low-power black-and-white camera that can sweep across a field of view with the help of a mechanical arm. The arm moves when the team applies a high voltage, which makes the material bend and moves the camera to the desired position.

The camera allows a viewer to capture a high-resolution, panoramic shot or track a moving object with the mechanical arm that can pivot 60 degrees. There can be a wide range of applications for this discovery, ranging from biology to exploring novel environments, and to get a view of the world seen by Ant-Man!