Highlighted News
* Soft Robotics Workshop ICRA 2015
During ICRA2015 in Seattle, supported by IEEE’s Soft Robotics Technical Committee, the workshop “Soft Robotics: Actuation, Integration, and Applications – Blending Research Perspectives” will be organised.
Full-day workshop: May 30th, 2015
The emerging field of soft robotics holds great promise for bringing robots into all aspects of our daily lives, especially areas previously forbidden to rigid robots. This workshop will analyze how promises of soft robotics can be fulfilled, broadly benefiting society. To address translation of soft robotics research, the first part of the workshop will ponder actuators and use of novel materials and the second, integration and applications. The rise of soft actuators has caused the community to reevaluate motion generation from the ground up. New research directions emerge from novel materials: dielectric elastomers, carbon nanotube yarn and self-healing materials. New actuator technologies and fabrication approaches will bring about better force-speed operating points, variable impedance, more convenient form factors, and actuators without transmission mechanisms. Growth of academic soft robotics research naturally occasions greater technological adoption. Integrating sensing and control will make soft actuators amenable to emerging industries. Softness in robotics can manifest itself by virtual and material approaches. Applications of soft robotics include wearable robotics, surgical robots, micromanipulation, search and rescue, and others. The ultimate goal of the workshop is to point the way forward for “real world” soft robots by answering: “Where and how can soft robots outperform rigid robots?”
The program contains 14 invited speakers and 24 posters (with 3min on stage poster presentation). For participation, please register for the workshop through the general conference registration website.
* Soft Robotics Week (April 13-17, 2015, Livorno, Italy)
The event is co-sponsored by the European FET-Open Coordination Action for Soft Robotics – RoboSoft and the Marie Curie Initial Training Network SMART-E, and will involve international experts across multiple fields in the scientific community of soft robotics, industrial leaders, young researchers and students, to discuss current research activities and applications and to face future frontiers for the field of soft robotics.
Major events are the the RoboSoft Plenary Meeting and the RoboSoft & SMART-E Joint School on “Applications and Frontiers of Soft Robotics”. For more information and registration visit this link.
* The current issue of Soft Robotics is already online
* Job: Fully funded PostDoc position in Soft Robotics at The BioRobotics Institute of the Schola Superiore Sant’Anna (Pisa, Italy). Information and application available here.
* For other news and stories from the soft robotics community, you can read the RoboSoft Newsletter.
Published Journal Articles
* Soft sensing, artificial skin, electronic skin:
- Soft tactile skin using an embedded ionic liquid and tomographic imaging (J. Mechanisms Robotics, Feb. 2015)
- Tactile surface classification for limbed robots using a pressure sensitive robot skin (Bioinspir. Biomim., Feb. 2015)
* Soft robot fabrication, growing robot:
- Continuous liquid interface production of 3D objects (Science, March 2015)
- Design and fabrication of a soft robotic hand with embedded actuators and sensors (J. Mechanisms Robotics, Feb. 2015)
- Shape deposition manufacturing of a soft, atraumatic, and deployable surgical grasper (J. Mechanisms Robotics, Feb. 2015)
- Surface and shape deposition manufacturing for the fabrication of a curved surface gripper (J. Mechanisms Robotics, Feb. 2015)
- Hybrid deposition manufacturing: Design strategies for multimaterial mechanisms via three-dimensional printing and material deposition (J. Mechanisms Robotics, Feb. 2015)
* Soft actuator, flexible actuator, compliant actuator:
- Contact lines on soft solids with uniform surface tension: analytical solutions and double transition for increasing deformability (Proc. Math. Phys. Eng. Sci., March 2015)
- Revealing bending and force in a soft body through a plant root inspired approach (Scientific Report, March 2015)
- Bending a beam by a generalized ideal elastomeric gel (Proc. Math. Phys. Eng. Sci., Feb. 2015)
* Soft robot application:
- Soft, curved electrode systems capable of integration on the auricle as a persistent brain–computer interface (PNAS, March 2015)
- A biologically inspired soft exosuit for walking assistance (Int. J. Robot. Res., March 2015)
- Exo-Glove: A wearable robot for the hand with a soft tendon routing system (IEEE Robot. Automat. Mag., March 2015)
* Morphological computation, morphological change, self-organization:
- Goal-directed multimodal locomotion through coupling between mechanical and attractor selection dynamics (Bioinspir. Biomim., March 2015)
- Dual-stiffness structures with reconfiguring mechanism: Design and investigation (J. Intell. Mater. Syst. Struct., March 2015)
- Materials that couple sensing, actuation, computation and communication (Science, March 2015)
- Polymorphic ring-shaped molecular clusters made of shape-variable building blocks (Nanomaterials, Feb. 2015)
* Soft matter electronics, stretchable electronics:
- Phenomena of nonlinear oscillation and special resonance of a dielectric elastomer minimum energy structure rotary joint (Appl. Phys. Lett. , March 2015)
- Mechanically stretchable and tunable metamaterial absorber (Appl. Phys. Lett. , March 2015)
- Optically switchable natural silk (Appl. Phys. Lett. , March 2015)
Popular Articles
- Soft, energy-efficient, robotic wings (Science Daily, March 2015)
- Materials that couple sensing, actuation, computation and communication (Robohub.org, March 2015)
- Rubbery glass arrives (Scientific America, Feb. 2015)
- A wearable, 3D-printable temperature sensor (KurzweilAI, Feb. 2015)
- Sensory-motor tissues for soft robots (Robohub.org, Feb. 2015)