Project PI : Kristin L WOOD
Task PI : Foong Shaohui, Soh Gim Song, Low Hong Yee, Roland Bouffanais, Mohan Rajesh Elara
Project Period : 25 October 2013 to 24 October 2018
A strategic opportunity exists to develop Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) platforms for urban settings at greatly reduced scales and with unique mission capabilities. The team aims to develop autonomous bio-inspired miniature systems that mimic individual and collective insect or small animal behaviour for surveillance tasks in urban environments, commencing with terrestrial vehicles for indoor settings and moving into transformable terrestrial-aerial vehicles for indoor-outdoor settings as longer-term goals. Based on the foundations of systems-of-systems design approaches, new and integrated material structures with unique locomotion, material features for climbing, reconfiguration elements, sensors, and flexible electronics will be systematically developed and demonstrated in unique test-bed environments at SUTD. In addition to tackling key technological challenges, this project seeks to contribute to the design science of autonomous systems by developing and testing design principles inspired by nature. Autonomous design in this context will be provide systematic processes for integrating and leveraging current and breakthrough of technologies.
