Birdbots, Bugbots, and Faux Gecko: Imitating Nature at Fearing Lab, Berkeley

Many of today's robots are large, clunky assemblages of wheels, wires, and electronics. On the other hand, we can make much more mobile and effective ones by learning from millions of years of natural evolution. At the Fearing Lab in UC Berkeley, we imitate cockroaches, birds, and geckos; animals with very interesting properties. What can we gain by modeling our machines after these runners, fliers, and climbers?.

Speaker: Ian Krase an alumnus of Terra Linda High School, who took a strong interest in science and engineering in a wide variety of subfields. Ian taught himself machining, built electronic equipment, and made glass mirrors the old way. He also worked on equipment during internships at the UC Berkeley nanotechnology labs. Currently he is an undergraduate at UC Berkeley in the Mechanical Engineering department where he has discovered his love of robotics and joined the Fearing Lab, a group which focuses on imitating nature to make highly efficient small robots.

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