Rob Wood

摘要

Rob Wood sometimes finds himself following a bee across neighbors' yards. "I guess it's just a fascination," says Wood, 33, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Harvard University. As founder of the Harvard Microrobotics Lab, he is trying to identify the unique factors that make a variety of insects efficient. Then he's figuring out ways to replicate those biological advantages in tiny robots. He and eight graduate students are working to build a menagerie of mechanical creatures, from bees to termites. They're using the locomotion of cockroaches and centipedes as models for gizmos that can navigate any terrain, perhaps to seek out victims in earthquake rubble.