Kevin Chen - "Agile and Robust Micro-Aerial-Robots Driven by Soft Artificial Muscles"

Why It Matters

These soft‑muscle micro‑drones demonstrate that compliance, speed, and autonomy can coexist at insect scale, opening new markets for resilient swarm robotics in inspection, agriculture, and disaster response.

Key Takeaways

• Soft artificial muscles enable fast, precise micro‑aerial flight.
• Hybrid soft‑rigid designs achieve insect‑level resilience to collisions.
• New 7‑gram robot flies up to 2 m/s with 1 cm accuracy.
• Onboard sensing and MPC allow autonomous maneuvers without motion capture.
• Power‑dense actuators now operate at low voltage, moving toward full autonomy.

Summary

Kevin Chen’s presentation spotlights a new generation of insect‑scale aerial robots that combine soft artificial muscles with rigid airframes, challenging the conventional view that soft robots are inherently slow and imprecise. By leveraging dielectric elastomer actuators capable of hundreds of cycles per second, MIT’s team has built hybrid micro‑systems that can flap wings, hover, and execute aggressive maneuvers while retaining the compliance and damage tolerance of soft materials.

The talk details a series of performance milestones: a 6‑gram platform that hovered for 20 seconds with 2‑cm positional error, a redesigned 7‑gram robot that sustains flights up to 1,000 seconds, reaches speeds of 2 m/s (≈50 body lengths per second), and executes somersaults at 7,000 °/s. Robustness tests—piercing actuators with ten needles, cutting wing sections, or burning holes—show the robot still flies, a resilience level surpassing many rigid micro‑aircraft. Additional bio‑inspired features, such as electroluminescent particles mimicking firefly flashes, enable visual communication and low‑cost motion tracking.

Advances in control architecture underpin these capabilities. A tube model predictive controller, compressed via imitation learning into a neural network, runs at 2 kHz, delivering insect‑like agility and precise trajectory tracking without external motion‑capture systems. Onboard IMUs and optical‑flow sensors now support fully autonomous flight, and power electronics have been down‑scaled from kilovolt to 7 V operation, paving the way for integrated batteries and true untethered missions.

The implications are far‑reaching: scalable, resilient micro‑robots could operate in swarms for environmental monitoring, pollination, or search‑and‑rescue, while their low‑cost fabrication and onboard autonomy lower barriers to deployment. Continued progress on power density and sensor integration promises fully self‑contained micro‑aerial platforms capable of complex, high‑speed tasks previously reserved for larger rigid drones.

Original Description

Speaker Biography

Kevin Chen is an associate professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT, USA. He received his PhD in Engineering Sciences at Harvard University in 2017 and his bachelor's degree in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University in 2012. His research interests include high bandwidth soft actuators, microrobotics, and aerial robotics. He is a recipient of the Steven Vogel Young Investigator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, multiple best paper awards (TRO 21, RAL 20, IROS 15), and the Ruth and Joel Spira Teaching Excellence Award.

Abstract

Flapping-wing flight at the insect-scale is incredibly challenging. Insect muscles not only power flight but also absorb in-flight collisional impact, making these tiny flyers simultaneously agile and robust. In contrast, existing aerial robots have not demonstrated these properties. Rigid robots are fragile against collisions, while soft-driven systems suffer limited speed, precision, and controllability. In this talk, I will describe our effort in developing a new class of bio-inspired micro-flyers, ones that are powered by high bandwidth soft actuators and equipped with rigid appendages. We constructed the first heavier-than-air aerial robot powered by soft artificial muscles, which can demonstrate a 1000-second hovering flight. In addition, our robot can recover from in-flight collisions and perform somersaults within 0.10 seconds. I will also discuss our recent progress in incorporating onboard sensors, electronics, and batteries.