Daniel Drew
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley
BSAC Graduate Researcher, Kris Pister Group
September 11, 2018 | 12:00 to 01:00 | 490 Cory Hall
Host: Michael Cable
Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) force was noted as early as 1709 and investigated by great minds like Benjamin Franklin, Faraday, and Maxwell. The presentation will focus on research developing novel EHD actuators using MEMS microfabrication techniques and investigations into miniaturization and scaling of EHD thrusters. Robotic platforms enabled by EHD thrusters have interesting capabilities: silent flight; mechanical simplicity (no moving parts); extremely high thrust-to-weight ratios.
Autonomous mobile microrobots, not static sensor nodes, are the necessary platform for the ubiquitous sensor (and actuator) systems that will inform the connected world of tomorrow. Swarms of microrobots will deploy and reconfigure as needed to drive industrial and commercial solutions ranging from precision agriculture to infrastructure monitoring and maintenance. Future end-users will interact with the digital world in their daily lives using microrobot swarm interfaces as tangible, versatile, and expressive mediators of data. Future research goals for the ionocraft platform, and for autonomous microrobots in general, will conclude the presentation. www.danieldrew.me | bsac.berkeley.edu/rsscast
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