Event Location: 1305 Newell Simon Hall
Bio: Robert Wood is an Associate Professor in Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Prof. Wood completed his M.S. (2001) and Ph.D. (2004) degrees in the Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the U. C. Berkeley. He is founder of the Harvard Microrobotics Lab which contains advanced facilities for rapid development and evaluation of unconventional robots on the micron to centimeter scale. His current research interests involve the creation of biologically-inspired aerial and ambulatory microrobots, the unsteady aerodynamics of flapping-wing flight, minimal control of under-actuated computation-limited systems, decentralized control of multi-agent systems, artificial muscles, and morphable soft-bodied robots. He is the winner of a 2007 DARPA Young Faculty Award, a 2008 NSF Career Award, a 2008 ONR Young Investigator Award, a 2009 Air Force Young Investigator Award, multiple best paper and best video awards, is a member of the 2008 class of Technology Review’s top 35 innovators under the age of 35, and in 2010 received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Obama. Wood has served as PI or co-PI on multiple sponsored research projects including the NSF-sponsored Expeditions in Computing ‘RoboBees’ project which he is leading.

Abstract: We seek to elucidate how to apply biological principles to the creation of robust, agile, inexpensive robotic insects. However, biological inspiration alone is not sufficient to create robots that mimic the agile locomotion of their arthropod analogs. This is particularly true as the characteristic size of the robot is decreased: to create high performance robotic insects, we must explore novel manufacturing paradigms, develop a greater understanding of complex fluid structure interactions for flapping-wings, generate high efficiency power and control electronics, create new forms of actuation and sensing, and explore alternative control strategies for computation-limited systems. This talk will describe challenges for the creation of robotic insects and the state of the art for each of these topics. I will also give an overview of the topics we are addressing in the NSF Expeditions in Computing ‘RoboBees’ project.