The average Hackaday reader is likely at least familiar with acoustic levitation — a technique by which carefully arranged ultrasonic transducers can be used to suspend an object in the air indefinitely. It’s a neat trick, the sort of thing that drives them wild at science fairs, but as the technique only works on exceptionally small and light objects it would seem to have little practical use.
That is, unless, you happen to be interested in exceptionally small and light objects. A paper titled Automated Photogrammetric Close-Range Imaging System for Small Invertebrates Using Acoustic Levitation describes a fascinating device which allows the researchers to image insects in what’s essentially a weightless environment.
With the delicate specimens suspended in front of the lens, there’s no background to worry about and they can be perfectly lit from all angles. What’s more, with careful control of the ultrasonic transducers, it’s possible to control the rotation of the target — allowing researchers to produce 3D scans of the insects using just one camera.
There isn’t a whole lot of technical detail on the device itself, other than the fact that spherical chamber has a radius of 60 mm and is fitted with 96 Murata MA40S4R/S transducers operating at 40 kHz. The paper notes that early attempts to control the transducer array with a Arduino Mega failed, and that the team had to switch over to a FPGA. With their current signal generator stage, the researchers are able to rotate the specimen by 5° angles.
Interested in learning more about acoustic levitation? University of Bristol research scientist Asier Marzo gave a talk on the subject at Hackaday Belgrade in 2018 that you won’t want to miss.
Wonder if that insect goes deaf…lol
Hard to go deaf when it’s already dead
The technique might be possible to do under anesthesia.. that might have some research applications such as capturing the size and shape of insects at different life stages
anesthesised, while bieng ultrasonicly levitated
definily into ailien abduction teritory with that
but as I am seriously into bugs, and microscopic and macro photography, I get it
I do my photos, dead or alive, dead bugs I find, or live ones
that are sometimes co-operative
wolf/jumping spiders are my all time favorites, as they are definitly curious, and will orient to face a person, looking right at you,zero fear or agression
also a lot of bugs can be stupified with cold, and early mornings in the fall, is the time to find the largest dragonflys, which can be handled gently, same with ,bees wasps and hornets, then put them back out in a sunny spot where they stumble around like the are drunk, but not the dragonflys…they move with glacial grace
Ha, a few years back I had jumping spider jump on my screen.
For a short time I was able to make it “dance” by moving my on-screen mouse cursor around it (dark screen white/light cursor).
So I’d confirm the “curious” aspect.
Long ago we captured a jumping spider and had it in our lab as the mascot. Whenever a fly would happen by we would clap a beaker over the fly, squirt some diethyl ether under there and wait for the fly to stop moving. Said fly would be placed in with the spider who would ignore it until the fly reanimated. Then to the amusement of all the spider would deftly jump up and catch the fly mid-air and devour it.
So yes. You can definitely anesthetize insects and also yes, jumping spiders are amazing.