Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Michael Karpelson is a pioneering roboticist whose work spans two transformative domains: soft robotics and insect-scale aerial vehicles. His research has fundamentally advanced our understanding of how robots can operate autonomously at extreme size scales, from millimeter-scale crawlers to palm-sized flyers. Karpelson's contributions to soft robotics are perhaps his most widely recognized. His work on untethered soft robots — including both a mobile pneumatic platform and an explosively actuated jumping robot, together accumulating over 1,200 citations — demonstrated that compliant, body-integrated machines could operate entirely independently of external power or control tethers, a watershed moment for the field. Equally significant is his work on insect-scale flight. His research on flapping-wing microaerial vehicles, including the landmark untethered insect-sized flyer (537 citations), tackled foundational challenges in fabrication, actuation, and power electronics at milligram scales. His reviews and system-level analyses of piezoelectric actuators and ultralight high-voltage power circuits provided the community with essential engineering roadmaps for autonomous microrobots. With over 2,400 total citations, Karpelson's body of work has shaped modern microrobotics, demonstrating that sophisticated autonomous behavior is achievable even in the most constrained physical platforms.