Rob Wood Talk: Robotic Insects

3/12/15: Robotic Critters

On Thursday, Robert Wood from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences came to Wellesley's Science Center to give a talk on robotic insects. His discussion of the process was interesting to listen to, especially regarding the idea of pop-up robotic insects. I thought it was awesome that he came up with the idea from his son's pop-up book, and would love to learn more about the different designs they made to create the flies and the centipede. They must have consulted with pop-up origami specialists, because creating something so small (larger than nanotechnology and smaller than macro-technology) that is as complicated as an insect must have taken a tremendous amount of time to outline each sheet. Plus, from the photos he shown on his slide, there were different materials used for various parts of the fly, such as a transparent sheet for the wings versus a metallic sheet from the wings. What technology did his lab use to cut each material so that the body parts were able to pop out at the exact lengths that they desired? I also thought that the centipede and the cockroach-like critters at the end of the his slide were very amusing and fascinating to watch. There are so many possible applications of controlling an insect robot, and I am interested to know where Professor Wood and his lab apply his research.