Measurement of jumping force of a fruit fly using a mesa structured force plate

This paper reports on a mesa structured force plate for measurement of jumping force of a fruit fly. The proposed force plate is 5 mm × 5 mm × 20 μm in size. The thickness of the sensing beams is 7.5 μm which is thinner than that of the plate to increase the sensitivity in response to normal force. Using the fabricated force plate, the jumping force of a fruit fly was measured when it took off from the plate surface. The measurement result shows that the maximum value of the jumping force is approximately 8 times larger than the weight (mG, where m and G are the fruit fly mass and gravitational acceleration) of a fruit fly.