Highlighted News
* Successfully organized workshops on Soft Medical Robots and Soft Robots at IEEE ICRA 2014
* “Exploring soft robots: tales from the RoboSoft community” became the finalist of the Pecha Kucha sessions at IEEE ICRA 2014
* Workshop on “Advances on Soft Robotics” will be held at RSS 2014
New Videos
* Hydrogel walker soft robots, scientific results was published in Soft Matter
* Caspar the soft robotics fish, scientific results was presented at ISER 2014
* A novel type of compliant, underactuated robotic hand for dexterous grasping, scientific results will be presented at RSS 2014
Published Journal Articles
* Review:
- Cognition from the bottom up: on biological inspiration, body morphology, and soft materials (Trends Cogn. Sci., May 2014)
* Soft manipulation:
- Development of a tendon-driven robotic finger for an anthropomorphic robotic hand (Int. J. Robot Res.,April 2014)
- Anthropomorphic tendon-driven robotic hands can exceed human grasping capabilities following optimization (Int. J. Robot Res., April 2014)
- Design and testing of a selectively compliant underactuated hand (Int. J. Robot Res., April 2014)
- A compliant, underactuated hand for robust manipulation (Int. J. Robot Res., April 2014)
- An efficient static analysis of continuum robots (J. Mech. Robot., April 2014)
- Mechanics modeling of multisegment rod-driven continuum robots (J. Mech. Robot., June 2014)
* Soft locomotion:
- Design of variable-stiffness flapping mechanism for maximizing thrust of bio-inspired underwater robot (Bioinspir. Biomim ., March 2014)
- Flytrap-inspired robot using structurally integrated actuation based on bistability and developable surface (Bioinspir. Biomim ., March 2014)
- Continuously distributed magnetization profile for millimeter-scale elastomeric undulatory swimming (Appl. Phys. Lett., April 2014)
- Study of flexible fin and compliant joint stiffness on propulsive performance: theory and experiments (Bioinspir. Biomim ., April 2014)
* Soft actuator, flexible actuator, compliant actuator:
- Pneumatic torsional actuators for inflatable robots (J. Mech. Robot., April 2014)
- Fluid–structure interaction in compliant insect wings (Bioinspir. Biomim ., May 2014)
- How wing kinematics affect power requirements and aerodynamic force production in a robotic bat wing (Bioinspir. Biomim ., May 2014)
* Soft robot application:
- Behavior characteristics of manual alpation to localize hard nodules in soft tissues (IEEE Trans Biomed Eng, June 2014)
* Morphological computation, morphological change, self-organization:
- Guided self-organization in a dynamic embodied system based on attractor selection mechanism (Entropy, May 2014)
- SoftCubes: stretchable and self-assembling three-dimensional soft modular matter (Int. J. Robot Res., May 2014)
- Combining environment-driven adaptation and task-driven optimization in evolutionary robotics (PLoS ONE, June 2014)
* Soft-matter electronics, stretchable electronics :
- Mechanically adaptive organic transistors for implantable electronics (Adv. Mater., April 2014)
- Extremely compliant and highly stretchable patterned graphene (Appl. Phys. Lett., April 2014)
* Biological studies:
- Soft tissue artefacts of the human back: comparison of the sagittal curvature of the spine measured using skin markers and an open upright MRI (PLoS ONE, April 2014)
- The morphometry of soft tissue insertions on the Tibial Plateau: data acquisition and statistical shape analysis (PLoS ONE, May 2014)
- Hairy suckers: the surface microstructure and its possible functional significance in the Octopus vulgaris sucker (Beilstein J NAnotech, May 2014)
- Self-recognition mechanism between skin and suckers prevents octopus arms from interfering with each other (Curr. Biol., June 2014)
Conference Papers
- A soft, amorphous skin that can sense and localize textures (IEEE ICRA, June 2014)
- Internal impedance control helps information gain in embodied perception (IEEE ICRA, June 2014)
- Simplifying grasping complexity through generalization of kinaesthetically learned synergies (IEEE ICRA, June 2014)
- Bio-inspired tactile sensor sleeve for surgical soft manipulators (IEEE ICRA, June 2014)
- Novel uniaxial force sensor based on visual information for minimally invasive surgery (IEEE ICRA, June 2014)
- Null space redundancy learning for a flexible surgical robot (IEEE ICRA, June 2014)
- Softness display by a multi-fingered haptic interface robot (IEEE ICRA, June 2014)
- A novel type of compliant, underactuated robotic hand for dexterous grasping (RSS, accepted in June 2014)
Popular Article
- Flexible, bio-inspired machines are the future of engineering (Scientific American, April 2014)
- Shape-shifting things to come (Scientific American, April 2014)
- Liquid metal used to reconnect severed nerves (MIT Technology Review, April 2014)
- The fluid future of shape-shifting technology (Scientific American, May 2014)
- Transistors that wrap around tissues and morph with them (KurzweilAI.net, May 2014)
- Why an octopus never gets tangled (Nature News, May 2014)
- Tiny hairs help octopus suckers stick (Scientific American, May 2014)