Plenary Speakers

Florian Hartmann Biomimetic Materials and Machines Group Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems GERMANY

Energy- and decision autonomous robots at the insect-scale

Through millions of years of evolution, biological systems have mastered interactions with their environments, enabling sophisticated behaviours with little or no reliance on cognitive functions—their bodies inherently “understand” the physics of their surroundings. Mimicking the capabilities of biological organisms in insect-scale robots remains a highly challenging. In this talk, we explore strategies for enabling complex behaviour of in robots with reduced mechanical and computational complexity. We discuss how effective propulsion can be achieved in autonomous swimming robots using a minimal number of actuators. For terrestrial environments, we showcase insect-scale wheeled robots that harvest both energy and information directly from their surroundings to drive and guide locomotion. These robots achieve energy- and decision-autonomous operation through environmental cues, mediated by intricately coupled mechanical systems.