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Center for Autonomy
Enabling high-impact research in autonomous system design
About the Center for Autonomy
Located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Center for Autonomy will enable high-impact research and develop new educational programs for students and professionals. The Center will play an important role in designing innovative systems that can function autonomously, or without human intervention, in a safe and reliable way.
From self-driving cars to intelligent robotic assistants to remote surgical systems, autonomous technology will revolutionize the way we live, work, and play. In order to enable this revolution, however, advancements in foundational research and workforce development must first take place to provide assured and certified-safe performance.
Application areas include:
UPCOMING SEMINAR
Challenges and Opportunities for Insect-Scale Autonomous Aerial Robots
Friday, April 10, 2026
2:00pm Central Time
Talks are held virtually through Zoom
Speaker: Kevin Chen (MIT)
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. This work demonstrates for the first time that soft aerial robots can achieve agile and robust flight capabilities absent in rigid-powered micro-aerial vehicles, thus showing the potential of a new class of hybrid soft-rigid robots. I will also discuss our recent progress in incorporating onboard sensors, electronics, and batteries.