Logo: University of Southern California

Robo-Insects Come to USC Viterbi

New Assistant Professor Nestor Perez-Arancibia Explores the World of Flying Microrobotics
By: Katie McKissick
September 09, 2013 —

They can weigh as little 83 milligrams and have a mere three-centimeter wingspan. They will fly in formation and communicate with each other. They will exhibit complex flight capabilities and can hover gracefully. No, they’re not bees. They’re microrobots.

Photo by Alex Wild. alexanderwild.com

Nestor Perez-Arancibia, one of the contributors to the famous Robobee project at Harvard, began an assistant professorship in the USC Viterbi Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering department in Fall 2013. He plans to both continue his work with microrobots and expand on his main research theme in signals, systems and control.

Photograph of one of the flapping-wing flying microrobots, developed and fabricated at the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory. "Model-Free Control of a Flapping-Wing Flying Microrobot" Nestor O. Perez-Arancibia, Pierre-Emile J. Duhamel, Kevin Y. Ma and Robert J. Wood

Perez-Arancibia completed his bachelor’s and master’s degree in engineering science in his native Chile. He then completed both a master’s degree and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at UCLA.

Most recently, he was at Harvard doing postdoctoral research in the Microrobotics Laboratory, where he developed control and signal processing algorithms. “I decided to go to Harvard and work on microrobotics in the first place,” said Perez-Arancibia, “simply because flapping-wing flying robots are extremely cool.”

"Model-Free Control of a Flapping-Wing Flying Microrobot" Nestor O. Perez-Arancibia, Pierre-Emile J. Duhamel, Kevin Y. Ma and Robert J. Wood

After working with microrobots for the past three years, he plans to continue research in this area, perfecting high-performance control of individual flapping-wing robots. He will focus on making microrobots energy autonomous, more robust and better able to coordinate movements with each other, not entirely unlike a colony of bees.

Assistant Professor Nestor Perez-Arancibia

Before his work with flying robots, Perez-Arancibia’s research dealt with lasers and applied optics. The overlap of these two seemingly disparate research interests is control engineering.

“The coolest thing about control engineering (and control theory in particular) is that it is ubiquitous in modern technology and also in contemporary science. Common systems such as cars, airplanes and computers have hundreds to thousands of control loops inside them. Many subsystems inside the human body can be only understood using concepts such as input, output, feedback and stability. In my biased opinion, many problems in science, including fundamental problems in the social sciences such as economics, can be formulated as control problems.”

For this same reason, Perez-Arancibia’s other research interest is the brain-machine interface. “My interest follows naturally from noticing that the human brain is the ultimate super controller,” said Perez-Arancibia.

A star in his field, Perez-Arancibia chose to come to USC Viterbi not only because it “is one the best engineering schools in the USA and the world,” but because of his experience during the selection process: “What really convinced me to come here was the connection I felt during the interview with the members of the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering department.”

Perez-Arancibia was essentially born to be an engineer. “Somehow, I always knew that I wanted to become a researcher. I always knew I wanted to understand nature and create a different, increasingly more technologized world.” And no doubt, he will.  

Flapping-wing flying microrobot. "Model-Free Control of a Flapping-Wing Flying Microrobot" Nestor O. Perez-Arancibia, Pierre-Emile J. Duhamel, Kevin Y. Ma and Robert J. Wood