Chinese Company Unveils 34-Gram Bee-Like Micro-Drone at World Robot Conference
At the World Robot Conference 2025 in Beijing, a Chinese firm presented an impressively compact flapping-wing drone modeled on a bee. Weighing roughly 34 grams with a body length of about 22 cm and a wingspan near 24 cm, the tiny aircraft is currently the smallest member of the company's learning-enabled drone network, according to footage released by Reuters.
Design highlights and flight performance
The micro-drone achieves wing flapping frequencies between 15 and 20 Hz, producing a back-and-forth stroke of up to 180 degrees when airborne. The manufacturer says this model is their lightest to date and has achieved fully autonomous flight in tests. Its structure, produced via 3D printing, balances extreme lightness with the precision needed to house miniature actuators, gear reducers, communication modules and control electronics.
Mechanically, the craft pairs a flapping mechanism with compact drive components and multi-circuit boards. The company described a careful integration of lightweight structural elements and micro-motors to reach the necessary power-to-weight ratio for sustained flapping flight.
Swarm behavior and navigation: UWB-enabled coordination
One of the key ambitions for these bee-like drones is collective flight. The firm outlined plans to use ultra-wideband (UWB) positioning to coordinate groups of units in real time. UWB offers low-latency, high-accuracy ranging useful for close-formation maneuvers, collision avoidance and synchronized patterns — capabilities essential for practical swarms that operate indoors or in GPS-denied spaces.
In swarm mode, each vehicle runs lightweight onboard control loops while exchanging position and intent with neighbors. The architecture shifts higher-level coordination to distributed algorithms so that the group can adapt to lost nodes, obstacles, or changing mission goals without central dependence.
Materials, manufacturing and assembly
The company said the micro-drone's airframe components are 3D printed and subsequently assembled by hand. Additive manufacturing enables rapid iteration and highly optimized internal geometries that shave grams off the mass budget while preserving structural integrity. Hand assembly currently remains necessary due to the small form factor and the need for precise placement of tiny actuators, sensors and wiring.
As manufacturing scales, automation of subassembly tasks and improvements in micro-component integration could reduce manual labor and cost, potentially enabling wider deployment.
Technical challenges and trade-offs
Flapping-wing micro-air vehicles face unique engineering trade-offs: aerodynamic efficiency at small Reynolds numbers, actuator efficiency, energy density of tiny batteries, and resilience to gusts. Achieving useful endurance on a 34-gram platform is difficult; designers must balance battery capacity against weight and the power demands of continuous flapping and radio communications.
Other hurdles include reliable real-time control in cluttered environments, electromagnetic interference for onboard radios, and thermal management for motors and power electronics packed into a compact hull.
Potential applications
Small flapping drones like this can serve a range of applications where conventional rotorcraft are less practical. Possible uses include environmental monitoring in tight spaces, pollination research and targeted crop inspection, structural inspection inside industrial facilities, cinematic or theatrical displays, and scientific study of swarm dynamics. In particular, their lightweight footprint and insect-like flight profile make them well suited for low-disturbance observation in ecological settings.
For commercial adoption, however, mission profiles must account for limited payload and flight time; many deployments will likely pair micro-drones with larger carrier platforms or rely on tethered recharging stations to extend operational windows.