In this episode we talk to Ron Fearing who is the director of the Biomimetic Millisystem Laboratory at UC Berkeley in California. He presents the state of the art in aerial insect-size flapping robots with the Micromechanical Flying Insect (MFI) project and the challenges in designing millisystems, from autonomy and control in turbulent environments to hardware. Thanks to his know-how with the “tiny” he’s also been designing tools and kits for the rapid-prototyping of miniature robots of all types which might one-day be used in high-school science classes, or is it art?

Related episodes:

• Robots: A Robot Fly at Harvard and at the MoMA -- 20 June, 2008
• Robots: Controlled Flight of Insect-sized Robots -- 3 May, 2013
• Robots: Dynamic Systems -- 23 March, 2012
• Robots: Distributed Flight Array -- 13 August, 2010
• Robots: 50 Years of Robotics (Part 2) -- 7 May, 2010