A review of biological, biomimetic and miniature force sensing for microflight

Insect sensors are fascinating for their simplicity in design, efficiency in function, and robustness to variable environments. Many engineering applications would benefit from these features, therefore, much research, especially recently in biorobotics, has focused on biomimetic sensors. However, human engineering ingenuity still falls short in comparison to nature's capabilities. This research area is inherently multidisciplinary in nature, calling for collaboration from biologists, neurologists and engineers. This paper is intended to provide an insight into force sensor design for microflight based on current biological, biomimetic and miniature sensors available to compare existing attempts and to make a framework to identify issues that need further attention. This review covers recent experiments concerning the sensor design, as well as different key works in this area. The limitations and scaling issues with some of these methods are explored.