Robert C. Michelson

Lore & Background

Michelson was born in 1951 in Washington D.C., the only son of Carroll and Evelyn Michelson, and is related to Christian Michelsen, the first Prime Minister of Norway. He attended Burgundy Farm Country Day School during sixth through eighth grades and was President of the Fort Hunt Amateur Rocket Club at Fort Hunt High School, which built large instrumented solid fuel rockets launched at Camp Pickett artillery range. He graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1973 and the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1974 with degrees in Electrical Engineering.

From 1971 to 1973, Michelson worked as a research engineer on aerospace radar systems at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. He then moved to the Georgia Tech Research Institute, where during the 1970s and 1980s he developed radar signal processing and control hardware and worked on automation of remote sensing systems. In the late 1980s he became Head of the Georgia Tech Research Institute's Technology Development Division, and his research turned to unmanned aerial vehicle systems. He coined the term 'aerial robotics' in 1990 to represent the infusion of cognition into unmanned aerial vehicles.

Since the mid-1990s, Michelson's work concentrated on biologically inspired micro air vehicle design. From 1997 through 2004 he was adjunct associate professor to the School of Aerospace Engineering, teaching avionics for UAVs and MAV design. He retired from the Georgia Tech Research Institute in 2004 and holds the title of Principal Research Engineer Emeritus. He created Millennial Vision, LLC in 2004 to continue research into biologically inspired aerial robots and remote sensing, and is President of SEPDAC, a nonprofit educational and scientific organization.

Reader's Guide

Michelson's significance lies in his pioneering contributions to aerial robotics, particularly through the invention of the entomopter—a biologically inspired flapping-wing aerial robot—and the establishment of the International Aerial Robotics Competition, which became the longest running aerial robotics competition in the world. His work on the entomopter was recognized by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts with two contracts to explore its feasibility for slow flight in Mars' lower atmosphere. Michelson also coined the term 'aerial robotics' in 1990, framing the fusion of autonomy, information technology, and aeronautics that would dominate his research for two decades. He served as U.S. representative and deputy chief referee to the Aviation Industry Corporation of China's UAV Grand Prix in its inaugural year and subsequent editions, and was section editor for 'MAVs and Bio-Inspired UAVs' in Springer's Handbook of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. His awards include the 1998 AUVSI Pioneer Award, the highest recognition in the unmanned systems industry for technical contributions, and the 2001 Pirelli Award for the diffusion of scientific culture, along with the first Top Pirelli Prize. In 2016, the Georgia legislature recognized the International Aerial Robotics Competition and Michelson via Senate Resolution 1255 for advancing the state of the art in aerial robotics.

Did You Know?

• He was President of the Fort Hunt Amateur Rocket Club, which built 2m x 5 cm instrumented solid fuel rockets.
• He received the first €25,000 Top Pirelli Prize for endeavors related to the entomopter.