Highlighted News
* Successfully organized workshops on “Advances on soft robotics” at RSS 2014 as part of the Robosoft Coordination Action
* A soft robotics paper “A novel type of compliant, underactuated robotic hand for dexterous grasping” won the Best Student Paper award at RSS 2014. The authors also offer to build the robotic hand or just the actuator for other laboratories. Please contact the authors for further information.
* Call for papers: Special Issue on “Soft mechatronics – Mechanics and multi-physics of compliant transducers” (Springer International Journal Meccanica, IF=1.747). Deadline for full paper submission: October 1, 2014, with a target publication date in 2015. The online submission service is available here, and instructions for authors are available here.
New Videos
* Virtual muscles from servo motors and muscle models for compliant behaviors, scientific result was published in Industrial Robot
* Three chamber soft pneumatic actuator, scientific result was presented at the workshop on “Advances on Soft Robotics”
Published Journal Articles
* Review / perspective:
- Soft robotics on the move: Scientific networks, activities, and future challenges (Soft Robotics, June 2014)
- Advances in propulsive bionic feet and their actuation principles (Advances in Mechanical Engineering, July 2014)
* Soft manipulation:
- Dynamic model of a multibending soft robot arm driven by cables (IEEE Trans. Robot, June 2014)
- Learning object deformation models for robot motion planning (Robot. Auton. Syst., August 2014)
* Soft locomotion, passive dynamic locomotion:
- Three-dimensionally printed biological machines powered by skeletal muscle (PNAS, June 2014)
- Low-bandwidth reflex-based control for lower power walking: 65 km on a single battery charge (Int. J. Robot Res., June 2014),
- Movable shark scales act as a passive dynamic micro-roughness to control flow separation (Bioinspir. Biomim ., July 2014),
- Energy efficiency in friction-based locomotion mechanisms for soft and hard robots: Slower can be faster (Nonlinear Dynamics, August 2014)
* Soft sensing, artificial skin, electronic skin:
- SVAS3: Strain vector aided sensorization of soft structures (Sensors, July 2014)
* Soft actuator, flexible actuator, compliant actuator:
- Mechanics modeling of multisegment rod-driven continuum robots (J. Mechanisms Robotics, June 2014),
- Kinematic, stiffness, and dynamic analyses of a compliant tensegrity mechanism (J. Mechanisms Robotics, June 2014)
- Human-adaptive control of series elastic actuators (Robotica, June 2014)
- Robust force control of series elastic actuators (Actuators, July 2014)
- Bioinspired soft actuation system using Shape Memory Alloys (Actuators, July 2014)
- Novel additive manufacturing pneumatic actuators and mechanisms for food handling grippers (Actuators, July 2014)
* Soft robot application:
- Soft robotics technologies to address shortcomings in today’s minimally invasive surgery: The STIFF-FLOP approach (Soft Robotics, June 2014)
- A pilot study of a continuum shoulder exoskeleton for anatomy adaptive assistances (J. Mechanisms Robotics, June 2014)
* Self-organization, morphological computation:
- From spontaneous motor activity to coordinated behaviour: A developmental model (PLoS Comput. Biol., July 2014)
* Foldable robots:
- Folding robots and metamaterials (Science, August 2014)
- A method for building self-folding machines (Science, August 2014)
- Using origami design principles to fold reprogrammable mechanical metamaterials (Science, August 2014)
- Folding structures out of flat materials (Science, August 2014)
* Biological studies:
- Structural origins of morphing in plant tissues (Appl. Phys. Lett., June 2014)
- Controlling osteogenic stem cell differentiation via soft bioinspired hydrogels (PLoS ONE, June 2014)
Popular Article
- Robots get flexible and torqued up with origami wheels (IEEE Spectrum, June 2014)
- How squishy would you like your robot? (IEEE Spectrum, July 2014)
- Elastic cloaking material makes objects “unfeelable” (Scientific American, July 2014)
- Silicone sensors give robot fingers the human touch (Wired, July 2014)
- Phase-changing material could allow even low-cost robots to switch between hard and soft states (Robohub.org, July 2014)
- How to create ‘soft’ machines (Kurzweilai.net, July 2014)
- A tentacled, flexible breakthrough (The New York Times, July 2014)