Rob Wood Talk

Today I had the opportunity to attend a Physics and Engineering seminar given by Professor Robert Wood from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Professor Wood is the founder of the Harvard Microrobotics Lab, and his work involves developing biologically-inspired robots with feature sizes on the micrometer to centimeter scale. In today's lecture, he focused on his lab's work involving the creation of flying robotic "insects." 

What I found particularly interesting about the work he discussed today was the process by which his flying insect devices were assembled. In the past, these tiny devices were laboriously put together by tweezers one piece at a time. Rob Wood's lab, however, developed a "pop-up folding" method to assemble the whole device, and others like it in one go. There is an exponential amount of planning put into assembling devices in this way, which makes the end process truly astounding to watch. A more detailed description of this method can be found in the video below. 

It was also interesting to see how his lab tackled the issue of making these tine robotic devices fly independently. While I did not understand much of the mechanics mentioned, the process Professor Wood described reminded me of a lot of the feedback and control troubleshooting we've been doing in class. 

For anyone interested in learning more about Professor Wood's work and the information discussed in the lecture, below is a similar talk he did for National Geographic.