Robert C. Michelson is widely known for inventing the Entomopter, a biologically inspired flapping-winged aerial robot, and for having established the International Aerial Robotics Competition. He has received degrees in electrical engineering from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the Georgia Institute of Technology. His professional career began at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory where he worked on radar-based ocean surveillance systems. He later became a member of the research faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology. At the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) he was involved in full-time research, directing over 30 major research programs. He holds three U.S. patents and authored over 83 journal papers, book chapters, and reports. CareerFrom 1971 to 1973 he was a research engineer working on aerospace radar systems at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. Michelson spent the next 30 years in various engineering and management capacities within the GTRI. During the 1970s and 1980s Michelson primarily developed radar signal processing and control hardware, but in the late 1980s his interests turned to UAV systems as the ultimate fusion of autonomy, information technology, and aeronautics. In particular, "aerial robotics" (a term he coined in 1990 to represent the infusion of cognition into unmanned aerial vehicles) dominated his research interests for the next two decades. Since the mid 1990s, Michelson's work has concentrated on biologically inspired micro air vehicle design. Michelson retired from the GTRI in 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.Professional activitiesMichelson has been NATO/RTA lecturer at the Turkish Air Force Academy, and invited lecturer on Micro Air Vehicle technology at both the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics and the Royal Military Academy in Brussels. He was the first "MITRE Technology Speaker". He has been a visiting technology professor in six nations and has been a consultant to the U.S. Army and the Indian Ministry of Defence. He created the short course, “21st Century Aerial Robotics”, and the digital signal processing lecture/demonstrations in “Principals of Modern Radar” at Georgia Tech. He also created and organizes of the annual International Aerial Robotics Competition which is now in its 21st year. For eleven years, was Editor for Robotics Systems for the AESS Transactions.Honors and AwardsMichelson is an Associate Fellow of the AIAA, Senior Member of the 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 International organization. In 1998 Michelson received the AUVSI Pioneer Award. 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.