News

2022

Our work on soft-actuated aerial microrobot is featured in MathWorks Newsletters. Thank you MathWorks for supporting our students and our research!

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Prof. Chen gave an invited talk for the Institute for Robotics & Intelligent Machines (IRIM) at Georgia Tech.

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Prof. Chen gave a plenary talk at the International Conference on Manipulation, Automation and Robotics at Small Scales (MARSS 2022).

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Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at Penn State’s Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series.

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With Professor Pakpong Chiraratantanon at City University of Hong Kong, we organized a special issue in Micromachines. This special issue includes a collection of six research articles in the area of microrobotics.

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Our paper “FireFly: An Insect-scale Aerial Robot Powered by Electroluminescent Soft Artificial Muscles” is published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. See MIT News for a detailed description and video.

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Suhan and Zhijian have received the AY22-23 Mathworks Engineering Fellowship. They have been using MATLAB and Simulink extensively to characterize and control micro aerial robots. Congratulations to both!

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Prof. Chen received the 2022 IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters Outstanding Associate Editor Award.

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We are honored that our paper “Collision resilient insect-scale soft-actuated aerial robots with high agility” was selected as the recipient of the 2021 IEEE Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award.

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With Professor Pakpong Chiraratantanon at City University of Hong Kong, we are organizing a special issue in Micromachines. We welcome submissions (before March 15th, 2022) in the broad area of microscale actuators, sensors, robotics, dynamics and control.

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With Profs. Chiraratantanon, Helbling, and Paik, we will be organizing a workshop “Challenges and Opportunities of Bio-inspired Design, Actuation, and Locomotion” at ICRA 2022. The full-day workshop will have ten speakers, panel discussions, and poster presentations. We also welcome poster and abstract submissions.

2021

Our recent paper “High Lift Micro-Aerial-Robot Powered by Low Voltage and Long Endurance Dielectric Elastomer Actuators” is published in Advanced Materials as a cover article and is included in the “Rising Stars” collection. See MIT News for a detailed description and video summary.

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Prof. Chen will present our recent development of soft aerial robots at the Vertical Flight Society (VFS). Please register here for online access (confirmation code 12121).

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Our collaborative work, “A dynanmic electrically driven soft vale for control of soft hydraulic actuators“, is published in PNAS.

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Zhijian Ren, our group’s PhD student, has received a AY21-22 Mathworks Engineering Fellowship. He has been using MATLAB and Simulink extensively to characterize and control micro aerial robots. Congratulations!

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Our recent paper is selected as one of the five winners of “RA-L Best Paper Award 2020”. See the full list here.

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Our recent work “Collision resilient insect-scale soft-actuated aerial robots with high agility” is published in IEEE Transactions on Robotics. A detailed description of our work can be found in MIT news.

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Professor Chen speaks with NPR about his work on developing a new microdrone inspired by insect flights. Full story via National Public Radio (NPR).

2019

Our recent work “Controlled flight of a microrobot powered by soft artificial muscles” is published in Nature. Selected media coverage can be found here: RoboBee powered by soft muscles.

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In a 5-minute talk at the MIT Media Lab, Professor Chen briefly introduced the functions and potential applications of insect-scale robots.

2015-2018