Farrell Helbling’s research focuses on the design of cm-scale robots. Countless science fiction works have set our expectations for small, mobile, autonomous robots for use in a broad range of applications. The ability to 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, there remain significant challenges in making these highly-articulated mechanical devices fully autonomous due to the severe mass and power constraints. Helbling’s research looks at the integration of the control system, sensors, and power electronics within the strict weight and power constraints of these vehicles, taking a holistic approach to navigating the inherent tradeoffs in each component in terms of their size, mass, power, and computation requirements.