Robert C. Michelson
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Robert C. Michelson is an American engineer and academic. He is widely known for inventing the Entomopter at GTRI and for establishing the International Aerial Robotics Competition.
[edit] Biography
He was born in Washington D.C. (1951) and is a descendant of Christian Michelsen, the first Prime Minister of Norway. He is a graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (1973) and the Georgia Institute of Technology (1974) with degrees in Electrical Engineering. From 1971 - 1973 he was a research engineer working on aerospace radar systems at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C. Michelson spent the next 30 years in various engineering and management capacities within the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) in Atlanta, Georgia U.S.A. From 1997 through 2004 Michelson was Adj. Associate Professor to the School of Aerospace Engineering teaching classes in avionics for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and Micro/Mini Air Vehicle (MAV) design. He is the creator of the International Aerial Robotics Competition. Michelson retired from GTRI in September of 2004 and currently holds the title of Principal Research Engineer Emeritus with the Institute. In 2004 he created Millennial Vision, LLC to continue research into biologically inspired aerial robots and remote sensing. He is the President of SEPDAC (Scientific Enterprise in Pursuit and Discovery of Ancient Cultures), a nonprofit educational and scientific organization.
[edit] Honors and Awards
Prof. Michelson is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a Full Member of the Scientific Research Society of North America, Sigma Xi. During the 1990s he served as President and member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems (AUVSI) International organization. In 1998 Michelson received the AUVSI Pioneer Award which is the highest level of recognition within the unmanned systems industry for technical contributions. Michelson is the recipient of the 2001 Pirelli Award for the diffusion of scientific culture given by an international Jury for the "best multimedia project coming from any educational institution in the world". For endeavors related to the Entomopter, he was also awarded the first €25,000 Top Pirelli Prize.
