Today I attended a lecture given by Professor Robert Wood from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He talked about creating robots on an extremely small scale; the size of a house fly! If the robot is that small, imagine how small the its parts must be!
The part of his lecture I found very interesting was the process of assembly. He joked about graduate students spending weeks putting together the parts using tweezers. He then told us about how looking at origami and his sons pop-up books gave him the idea to assemble the robotic insects in a similar way. A detailed explanation can be found in this video:
He also showed us some other really cool designs like this centipede:
Another aspect I liked about his work is how interdisciplinary it is, combining math, physics, biology, engineering, computer science and even arts like oragami.
Sidenote: I've always felt uncomfortable about seeing insects in the restroom. Now my fears of being spied on by them during private hours have more legitimacy.
