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A Polyimide Film-Based Simple Force Plate for Measuring the Body Mass of Tiny Insects

Insects exhibit excellent maneuvers such as running and flying despite their small bodies; therefore, their locomotion mechanism is expected to provide a design guideline for micromachines. Numerical simulations have been performed to elucidate this mechanism, whereby it is important to develop a mo...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Shimazaki, Kenichiro, Sugimoto, Takumi, Toda, Hirofumi, Takahashi, Hidetoshi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9654976/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36366048
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22218352
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author Shimazaki, Kenichiro
Sugimoto, Takumi
Toda, Hirofumi
Takahashi, Hidetoshi
author_facet Shimazaki, Kenichiro
Sugimoto, Takumi
Toda, Hirofumi
Takahashi, Hidetoshi
author_sort Shimazaki, Kenichiro
collection PubMed
description Insects exhibit excellent maneuvers such as running and flying despite their small bodies; therefore, their locomotion mechanism is expected to provide a design guideline for micromachines. Numerical simulations have been performed to elucidate this mechanism, whereby it is important to develop a model that is physically identical to the target insect’s parts to reproduce kinematic dynamics. In particular, in flight, the shape and mass of wings, which flap at high frequencies, are significant parameters. However, small insects such as fruit flies have small, thin, and light wings; thus, their mass cannot be easily measured. In this study, we proposed a high-resolution and simple force plate to measure the mass of each part of a tiny insect. The device consists of a circular plate supported by flat spiral springs made of polyimide film, and a laser displacement meter that detects the displacement of the center of the plate. The simple plate fabrication process requires only a couple of minutes. A fabricated force plate with a sub-N/m spring constant achieved a resolution of less than 2 µg. As a demonstration, the wing mass of the fruit flies was measured. The experimental results suggest that the wings accounted for approximately 0.4% of the body mass.
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spelling pubmed-96549762022-11-15 A Polyimide Film-Based Simple Force Plate for Measuring the Body Mass of Tiny Insects Shimazaki, Kenichiro Sugimoto, Takumi Toda, Hirofumi Takahashi, Hidetoshi Sensors (Basel) Article Insects exhibit excellent maneuvers such as running and flying despite their small bodies; therefore, their locomotion mechanism is expected to provide a design guideline for micromachines. Numerical simulations have been performed to elucidate this mechanism, whereby it is important to develop a model that is physically identical to the target insect’s parts to reproduce kinematic dynamics. In particular, in flight, the shape and mass of wings, which flap at high frequencies, are significant parameters. However, small insects such as fruit flies have small, thin, and light wings; thus, their mass cannot be easily measured. In this study, we proposed a high-resolution and simple force plate to measure the mass of each part of a tiny insect. The device consists of a circular plate supported by flat spiral springs made of polyimide film, and a laser displacement meter that detects the displacement of the center of the plate. The simple plate fabrication process requires only a couple of minutes. A fabricated force plate with a sub-N/m spring constant achieved a resolution of less than 2 µg. As a demonstration, the wing mass of the fruit flies was measured. The experimental results suggest that the wings accounted for approximately 0.4% of the body mass. MDPI 2022-10-31 /pmc/articles/PMC9654976/ /pubmed/36366048 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22218352 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Shimazaki, Kenichiro
Sugimoto, Takumi
Toda, Hirofumi
Takahashi, Hidetoshi
A Polyimide Film-Based Simple Force Plate for Measuring the Body Mass of Tiny Insects
title A Polyimide Film-Based Simple Force Plate for Measuring the Body Mass of Tiny Insects
title_full A Polyimide Film-Based Simple Force Plate for Measuring the Body Mass of Tiny Insects
title_fullStr A Polyimide Film-Based Simple Force Plate for Measuring the Body Mass of Tiny Insects
title_full_unstemmed A Polyimide Film-Based Simple Force Plate for Measuring the Body Mass of Tiny Insects
title_short A Polyimide Film-Based Simple Force Plate for Measuring the Body Mass of Tiny Insects
title_sort polyimide film-based simple force plate for measuring the body mass of tiny insects
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9654976/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36366048
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22218352
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