2024
Prof. Chen is honored to receive the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (ONR YIP). We look forward to developing a new generation of soft-actuated aerial robots!
Prof. Chen gave an invited robotics seminar at Johns Hopkins University.
Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at the Self-healing and Damage Resilient Soft Robotics Workshop at IROS 2024.
Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at the Future of Work in the Age of Robotics and AI Workshop at AIM 2024.
Prof. Chen is promoted to associate professor without tenure (AWOT).
Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at the Future Directions of Advanced Materials Workshop.
With my colleagues Prof. Pakpong Chirarattananon, Prof. Siyi Xu, and Prof. Mirko Kovac, we will be organizing a soft robotics workshop at ICRA 2024. Please submit late breaking results, bring a poster, or simply visit our workshop.
Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at the Bio-inspired Robotics and Robotics for Biology workshop, ICRA 2024.
Congratulations to Nemo who received the School of Engineering MathWorks Fellowship!
Congratulations to Nemo who is featured on MIT School of Engineering’s Post.
Congratulations to Suhan who received the Zakhartchenko Fellowship!
Prof. Chen gave invited talks at two workshops in RoboSoft 2024.
Prof. Chen is honored to receive the Steven Vogel Young Investigator Award! We look forward to reporting more exciting results in 2024.
Congratulations to Nemo who won the second place in best pictures at MARC 2024!
Prof. Chen gave invited talks at the City University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
2023
Prof. Chen will serve as an associate editor for the International Journal of Robotics Research.
Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at the GE Edge Symposium.
Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at the University of Michigan Robotics Seminar.
Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at the University of Utah Robotics Seminar.
Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at Nodycon 2023.
Prof. Chen received the 2023 Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at EuroEAP.
Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at the MIT Robotics Seminar.
Prof. Chen received the NSF CAREER Award! We are excited to continue our research and education efforts in the microrobotics field.
Our robot is exhibited in the American Museum of Natural History! Prof. Chen gave an outreach talk at AMNH.
Prof. Chen gave an outreach talk at TEDxMIT.
Our work on insect-scale aerial robots is featured by BBC Earth Lab, in the video “Are Robot Bees The Future?” from the Planet Fix Series.
With my colleagues Edoardo Milana, Benjamin Gorissen, Stephano Palagi, and Joon-Wan Kim, we are co-organizing a workshop on small-scale soft robotics at RoboSoft 2023.
Our new result on damage resilient micro-aerial-robot is published as the cover article on Science Robotics! Here is a nice article from MIT News.
Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at SPIE-Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices.
Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at UCSD’s Contextual Robotics Institute.
Congratulations to our postdoctoral fellow Younghoon Lee who accepted a faculty offer in Mechanical Engineering at Gachon University (South Korea). Younghoon is our first postdoctoral researcher, and he will join his new position on March 1st, 2023. Congrats!
2022
Our work on FireFly (IEEE-RAL “FireFly: An Insect-scale Aerial Robot Powered by Electroluminescent Soft Artificial Muscles”) is selected as one of MIT’s top 10 research stories of 2022. We look forward to reporting more exciting research results in 2023!
Our work on soft-actuated aerial microrobot is featured in MathWorks Newsletters. Thank you MathWorks for supporting our students and our research!
Prof. Chen gave an invited talk for the Institute for Robotics & Intelligent Machines (IRIM) at Georgia Tech.
Prof. Chen gave a plenary talk at the International Conference on Manipulation, Automation and Robotics at Small Scales (MARSS 2022).
Prof. Chen gave an invited talk at Penn State’s Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series.
With Professor Pakpong Chiraratantanon at City University of Hong Kong, we organized a special issue in Micromachines. This special issue includes a collection of six research articles in the area of microrobotics.
Our paper “FireFly: An Insect-scale Aerial Robot Powered by Electroluminescent Soft Artificial Muscles” is published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. See MIT News for a detailed description and video.
Suhan and Zhijian have received the AY22-23 Mathworks Engineering Fellowship. They have been using MATLAB and Simulink extensively to characterize and control micro aerial robots. Congratulations to both!
Prof. Chen received the 2022 IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters Outstanding Associate Editor Award.
We are honored that our paper “Collision resilient insect-scale soft-actuated aerial robots with high agility” was selected as the recipient of the 2021 IEEE Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award.
With Professor Pakpong Chiraratantanon at City University of Hong Kong, we are organizing a special issue in Micromachines. We welcome submissions (before March 15th, 2022) in the broad area of microscale actuators, sensors, robotics, dynamics and control.
With Profs. Chiraratantanon, Helbling, and Paik, we will be organizing a workshop “Challenges and Opportunities of Bio-inspired Design, Actuation, and Locomotion” at ICRA 2022. The full-day workshop will have ten speakers, panel discussions, and poster presentations. We also welcome poster and abstract submissions.
2021
Our recent paper “High Lift Micro-Aerial-Robot Powered by Low Voltage and Long Endurance Dielectric Elastomer Actuators” is published in Advanced Materials as a cover article and is included in the “Rising Stars” collection. See MIT News for a detailed description and video summary.
Prof. Chen will present our recent development of soft aerial robots at the Vertical Flight Society (VFS). Please register here for online access (confirmation code 12121).
Our collaborative work, “A dynanmic electrically driven soft vale for control of soft hydraulic actuators“, is published in PNAS.
Zhijian Ren, our group’s PhD student, has received a AY21-22 Mathworks Engineering Fellowship. He has been using MATLAB and Simulink extensively to characterize and control micro aerial robots. Congratulations!
Our recent paper is selected as one of the five winners of “RA-L Best Paper Award 2020”. See the full list here.
Our recent work “Collision resilient insect-scale soft-actuated aerial robots with high agility” is published in IEEE Transactions on Robotics. A detailed description of our work can be found in MIT news.
Professor Chen speaks with NPR about his work on developing a new microdrone inspired by insect flights. Full story via National Public Radio (NPR).
2019
Our recent work “Controlled flight of a microrobot powered by soft artificial muscles” is published in Nature. Selected media coverage can be found here: RoboBee powered by soft muscles.
In a 5-minute talk at the MIT Media Lab, Professor Chen briefly introduced the functions and potential applications of insect-scale robots.
2015-2018
2018
Professor Chen was selected on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, in the category of Science. For more information, please check out the link below:
Forbes 30 Under 30, Science category
Forbes: Bite-Sized Robots Could Transform Natural Disaster Search And Rescue
Reuters: Robotic cockroach can walk on land and swim underwater
BBC News: Could a robotic cockroach aid rescues?
Popular Mechanics: Harvard Robotic Cockroach Walks Underwater
Harvard SEAS: Next-generation robotic cockroach can explore underwater environments
2017
Science News: These ‘robo-bees’ can dive, swim, and jump like dolphins
Harvard Gazette: New RoboBee flies, dives, swims and explodes out of water
BBC: The robot that can swim and fly and other tech news
CBC: Insect-sized robot can both fly and swim
Science Friday: Meet The Insect Bot That Uses Water To Fly
Oceans Deeply: Sticky Tech: Robots That Mimic Remoras Could Expand Ocean Exploration
Science News: This robotic ‘remora’ can cling to objects with a force 340 times its own weight
2016
Business Insider: The 19 most important things that happened in robotics this year
2015
IEEE Spectrum: Harvard’s Robot Bee Is Now Also a Submarine
Harvard Gazette: The tiny flying submarine
BBC News: Robotic Bee copies puffins to fly and swim
Fox News: Harvard engineers develop swimming ‘RoboBee’
Yahoo News: Harvard researchers create insect-sized robot that both fly and swim
Engadget: Robotic bees outdo their organic rivals by swimming 2015