
Ron Fearing
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, and is Vice-Chair for Graduate Matters (2016-present). His current research interests are in bioinspired milli-robotics, including jumping and crawling milli-robots, cooperative locomotion, rapid prototyping, and actuators. He has worked in tactile sensing, teletaction, dextrous manipulation, and parallel nano-grasping (gecko adhesion). 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 18 US and international patents.
In the News
With a hop, a skip and a jump, high-flying robot leaps over obstacles with ease
Robotic roach gets wings, sheds light on evolution of flight
When UC Berkeley engineers outfitted a six-legged robotic bug with wings in an effort to improve its mobility, they unexpectedly shed some light on the evolution of flight. The wings nearly doubled the running speed of the 25-gram robot. Find out why that wasn’t good enough for takeoff.
Engineers make artificial skin out of nanowires
UC Berkeley engineers have developed a pressure-sensitive electronic material from semiconductor nanowires that could one day be used as an artificial skin for robots and prosthetic limbs.