A team of university researchers is working to build a robot that could circulate air to better detect and measure toxic gases. And the key to their success lies inside a small aquatic insect.
Until now, toxicity sensors used in hard-to-access places like coal mines have been unreliable. Because the air in mines and tunnels is stagnant, air quality can greatly differ from one sample to the next, allowing for large margins of error in the sensors’ results. But the research team believes mayflies, which have seven small gill plates to help them breathe under water, could embody a water- and air-movement system that may improve the accuracy of sensor readings.
“Maybe we can learn something from the simple flapping plates of the mayfly,” mechanical engineering professor Ken Kiger said.
In what he has described as “a synergistic effort combining entomology and engineering,” Kiger and his colleague in the engineering school, professor Ilias Balaras, teamed up last September with entomology professor Jeffrey Shultz and entomology graduate student Andrew Sensenig to do just that.
Their research, funded by a $210,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, could eventually lead to the creation of robotic devices that mirror the action of these gill plates in order to move stagnant air and channel it toward toxicity sensors.
Kiger, using an analogy to demonstrate the role such technology could play, explained that a drop of dye in a glass of water takes a long time to disperse but when the water in the glass is stirred, the dye soon diffuses throughout the entire glass. Ideally, the mayfly-inspired robot would do the same to air, allowing sensors to detect a more accurate account of what gases are in the air and at what levels.
Mayflies are not the only organisms to have such a function, but their advantage is in their small size. The young mayflies, or “nymphs,” the researchers have been studying average seven millimeters long, with gill plates measuring only one millimeter.
Though this minute size complicates the researchers’ efforts to build a replica robot, the end product would be versatile and energy-efficient.
Balaras said their research is ultimately about “how we can learn from this insect to build a device that is helpful.”
Kiger said mayflies already help scientists in another fashion: When water quality in a stream or lake drops, mayflies are among the first organisms to die off, serving in effect as an “environmental bellwether.”
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