| Topic: | Nature’s Flying Machines: Lessons for Small Aerial Robots |
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| Speaker: | Dr Pakpong Chirarattananon Associate Professor, Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong |
| Date: | Tuesday, 4 April 2023 |
| Time: | 4.00pm to 6.00pm |
| Venue: | Lecture Theatre 3 Kent Ridge Crescent, National University of Singapore (Click here for location map.) |
| Host: | Dr Sutthiphong Srigrarom |
Recent years have seen rapid progress in the development of small flying robots, enabled by advances in materials, manufacturing, and control. However, flying at small scales poses fundamental challenges, including low Reynolds numbers that make flight inefficient and limited payload capacities that constrain battery size. These challenges have motivated roboticists to look to biology for inspiration, including insects with highly efficient flapping-wing flight. This talk will explore how bio-inspired design is enabling a new generation of small aerial robots that can achieve more with fewer components and less power. Examples will include flapping-wing robots that harness passive aerodynamic mechanisms, as well as revolving-wing drones and multimodal multirotors that leverage unsteady aerodynamics and versatile forms of locomotion. By drawing inspiration from biology, and focusing on minimalist design, these new robots are overcoming the power and weight constraints that have long limited small-scale flight.
Pakpong Chirarattananon is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at City University of Hong Kong. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University in 2014 and his M.Phil. in Computational Biology and B.A. in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on biologically-inspired robotic systems, micro aerial vehicles, and hybrid locomotion. Recently, he developed revolving-wing drones, flapping-wing robots, and multimodal multirotors, with related publications in Science, Nature, and Science Robotics. He uses intelligent mechanisms to solve dynamics and control problems, and enhances the performance of robotic devices through improved understanding of interactions between mechanical design, actuation, dynamics, control, and environmental factors. He has received several best paper awards, including the 2021 IEEE Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award.