Farrell Helbling’s research focuses on the design of autonomous microrobotic platforms. Designing robots that can move through highly dynamic and complex environments can expand capabilities in search and rescue operations and safety inspection tasks. These robots can also form a diverse collective to provide more flexibility than a multifunctional robot. Advances in multi-scale manufacturing and the proliferation of small electronic devices have paved the way to realizing this vision with centimeter-scale robots. However, sever mass and power constraints currently limit the capabilities of these robots. Her research looks at the integration of the control system, sensors, and power electronics, taking a holistic approach to navigating the inherent tradeoffs between size, mass, power, and computation requirements of these vehicles.