Ronald S. Fearing

Professor

Research Areas

• Biosystems & Computational Biology (BIO)
• Control, Intelligent Systems, and Robotics (CIR)
• Energy (ENE)

Research Centers

• Biomimetic Millisystems Lab
• Center for Intelligent Systems (CIS)
• Center for Interdisciplinary Biological Inspiration in Education and Research (CIBER)
• Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems (COINS)
• Robotics and Intelligent Machines Laboratory

Biography

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Ronald Fearing is a professor in the Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at Univ. of California, Berkeley, which he joined in Jan. 1988. He was Vice-Chair for Undergraduate Matters from 2000-2006. His current research interests are in micro robotics, including flying micro-robots, micro-assembly, parallel nano-grasping, and rapid prototyping. He has worked in tactile sensing, teletaction, and dextrous manipulation. He has a PhD from Stanford in EE (1988) and SB and SM in EECS from MIT (1983). He received the Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1991, and is the co-inventor on 6 US patents.

Selected Publications

• E. Steltz, M. Seeman, S. Avadhanula, and R. S. Fearing, "Power electronics design choice for piezoelectric microrobots," in Proc. 2006 IEEE/RSJ Intl. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 2006, pp. 1322-1328.
• K. Autumn, C. Majidi, R. E. Groff, A. Dittmore, and R. S. Fearing, "Effective elastic modulus of isolated gecko setal arrays," J. Experimental Biology, vol. 209, no. 18, pp. 3558-3568, Sep. 2006.
• C. Majidi, R. E. Groff, Y. Maeno, B. Schubert, S. Baek, B. Bush, R. Maboudian, N. Gravish, M. Wilkinson, K. Autumn, and R. S. Fearing, "High friction from a stiff polymer using microfiber arrays," Physical Review Letters, vol. 97, no. 7, pp. 076103-1-4, Aug. 2006.
• M. Spenko, M. Cutkosky, C. Majidi, R. S. Fearing, R. Groff, and K. Autumn, "Foot design and integration for bioinspired climbing robots," in Proc. SPIE: Unmanned Systems Technology VIII, G. R. Gerhart, C. M. Shoemaker, and D. W. Gage, Eds., Vol. 6230, Bellingham, WA: SPIE, 2006, pp. 19-1-12.
• A. M. Hoover, S. Avadhanula, R. E. Groff, and R. S. Fearing, "A rapidly prototyped 2-axis positioning stage for microassembly using large displacement compliant mechanisms," in Proc. 2006 IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 2006, pp. 289-295.
• R. Sahai, S. Avadhanula, R. Groff, E. Steltz, R. Wood, and R. S. Fearing, "Towards a 3g crawling robot through the integration of microrobot technologies," in Proc. 2006 Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (CRA 2006), Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 2006, pp. 296-302.
• R. J. Wood, S. Avadhanula, E. Steltz, M. Seeman, J. Entwistle, A. Bachrach, G. Barrows, S. R. Sanders, and R. S. Fearing, "Design, fabrication and initial results of a 2g autonomous glider," in Proc. 31st Annual Conf. of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON 2005), Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 2005, pp. 1870-1877.
• C. S. Majidi, R. E. Groff, and R. S. Fearing, "Attachment of fiber array adhesive through side contact," J. Applied Physics, vol. 98, no. 10, pp. 103521-1-5, Nov. 2005.
• R. J. Wood, E. Steltz, and R. S. Fearing, "Optimal energy density piezoelectric bending actuators," Sensors and Actuators A, vol. 119, no. 2, pp. 476-488, April 2005.
• C. Majidi, R. Groff, and R. S. Fearing, "Clumping and packing of hair arrays manufactured by nanocasting," in Proc. 2004 ASME Intl. Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition (IMECE '04)--Winter Meeting, New York, NY: ASME, 2004, pp. 6 pp.
• J. Yan and R. S. Fearing, "Wing force map characterization and simulation for the micromechanical flying insect," in Proc. 2003 IEEE/RSJ Intl. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003), Vol. 2, Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 2003, pp. 1343-1349.
• W. Wu, L. Shenato, R. J. Wood, and R. S. Fearing, "Biomimetic sensor suite for flight control of a micromechanical flying insect: Design and experimental results," in Proc. 2003 IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2003), Vol. 1, Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 2003, pp. 1146-1151.
• R. J. Wood, S. Avadhanula, M. Menon, and R. S. Fearing, "Microrobotics using composite materials: The micromechanical flying insect thorax," in Proc. IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Vol. 2, Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 2003, pp. 1842-1849.
• M. Sitti and R. S. Fearing, "Synthetic gecko foot-hair micro/nano-structures as dry adhesives," J. Adhesion Science and Technology, vol. 17, no. 8, pp. 1055-1073, Aug. 2003.
• D. Campolo, M. Sitti, and R. S. Fearing, "Efficient charge recovery method for driving piezoelectric actuators with quasi-square waves," IEEE Trans. Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, vol. 50, no. 3, pp. 237-244, March 2003.
• M. Moll, K. Goldberg, M. A. Erdmann, and R. S. Fearing, "Orienting micro-scale parts with squeeze and roll primitives," in Proc. 2002 IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Vol. 2, Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 2002, pp. 1931-1936.
• E. Shimada, J. A. Thompson, J. Yan, R. Wood, and R. S. Fearing, "Prototyping millirobots using dextrous microassembly and folding," in Proc. 2000 ASME Intl. Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition: Symp. on Microrobotics, Vol. 69-2, New York, NY: ASME, 2000, pp. 933-940.
• K. Autumn, Y. A. Liang, S. T. Hsieh, W. Zesch, W. P. Chan, T. W. Kenny, R. S. Fearing, and R. J. Full, "Adhesive force of a single gecko foot-hair," Nature, vol. 405, no. 6787, pp. 681-685, June 2000.
• G. Moy, U. Singh, E. Tan, and R. S. Fearing, "Human psychophysics for teletaction system design," Haptics-e, The Electronics J. of Haptics Research, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 20 p., Feb. 2000.