Imperial College London Event: Insects, drones and innovation

Insects, drones and innovation

Lear about drones and their future applications.

Date: 16 Nov 2016

Time: 18:00 - 19:00

Venue: Read Lecture theatre

Campus: South Kensington Campus

Speaker: Dr Mirko Kovac

  Professor Holger Krapp

Related Faculty: Engineering

Event type: Lecture

Audience: Open to all

Ticket: First come first served

Contact: Sangita Kerai

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones, have been identified as step changing technology with an estimated market value of $92bn over the next ten years. Their commercially available versions are currently used for aerial photography or filming. In most cases, however, they still require remote controls and GPS to manoeuvre and keep on track. The long term goal is to develop novel drone designs and autonomy solutions which make them more flexible and capable of operating in different environments including urban areas, forests, and across terrain interfaces. High manoeuvrability and autonomous guidance will be key features enabling drone delivery, drone-based inspection and repair, as well as emergency responses on disaster sites, for instance due to flooding or after oil spills.

Flying insects are truly autonomous. Without GPS or any other external guidance system some of them are endowed with a degree of manoeuvrability that outperforms a modern jet fighter. The design of two-winged flies in particular, perfected at an evolutionary time scale, enables a robust level of performance that conventional engineering approaches have not yet been able to achieve.

In our presentation we will outline the significance of drones in our future and give examples of how studying flying insects may help develop the next generations of drones which are more energy-efficient and feature a higher level of autonomy than feasible in current drones. We will also highlight the innovative potential that biological design principles offer when translated into novel UAV technology.

Biography 

Dr. Holger G Krapp is Professor of Systems Neuroscience in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College. He obtained his Diploma in Biology from the University of Tübingen, Germany, in 1992. In 1995 he was awarded the Dr rer nat (PhD) degree for his work on the neuronal mechanisms underlying optic flow processing in flies at the Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen. During his first postdoctoral position at the same institution he studied theoretical aspects and the neuronal basis of self-motion estimation. In 1996 he became postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology to work on locust nerve cells performing mathematical multiplications. From 1997 he spent three years as a research fellow at Bielefeld University, Germany, where he continued his work on insect vision in flies and locust. In 2000 he became temporary lecturer in Sensory Neuroscience in the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK, investigating the sensory control of insect behaviour. He joined the Department of Bioengineering in October 2005 where he applies engineering methods to study biological design principles of sensorimotor control in insects and their potential application to unmanned autonomous systems. 

Dr. Mirko Kovac is Director of the Aerial Robotics Laboratory and Senior Lecturer in Aero-structures at Imperial College London. His research group focusses on the development of novel, biologically inspired flying robots for distributed sensing in air and water and on autonomous robotic construction for future cities. Dr. Kovac's particular specialisation is in robot design, hardware development and multi-modal robot mobility. Before his appointment in London, he was post-doctoral researcher at the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory as part of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA. He obtained his PhD with the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). He received his M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) in 2005. During his studies he was research associate with the University of California in Berkeley USA, RIETER Automotive Switzerland, the WARTSILA Diesel Technology Division in Switzerland, and CISERV in Singapore. Since 2006, he has presented his work at numerous international conferences and in journals and has won several best paper and best presentation awards. He is also founding member of several robotics initiatives, including the London Robotics Network that acts as the community building hub in the larger London area for robotics in academia, government and industry. He has also been invited lecturer and keynote speaker at more than 30 research institutions world wide and has been representative speaker on education and innovation at the World Knowledge Dialogue Symposium 2008, the EPFL Didactic Days Conference 2008 and the London Innovation Summit 2014.

From: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/eventssummary/event_25-10-2016-12-16-59