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Full day workshop

Soft continuum manipulators

bottlenecks and applications

  • Date:
    To be confirmed
  • Location:
    Pacifico Yokohama National Convention Hall - Yokohama, Japan

Organizers

Lucia Beccai

Senior Researcher Tenured - Principal Investigator

Soft BioRobotics Perception
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy

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Egidio Falotico

Assistant Professor

The Biorobotics Institute
Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna - Italy

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Ian D. Walker

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

The Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Clemson University – USA

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Kyu-Jin Cho

Professor

School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Seoul National University - South Korea

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Abstract

The development of soft continuum manipulators has reached a certain level of maturity in research by both taking inspiration from nature and by exploiting new technological approaches. The overarching goal is to build systems that can adapt to the environment and perform grasping and manipulation tasks with high versatility in terms of payloads and different type of objects. In the artificial designs, it is important to avoid discretization of the embedded functionalities and material characteristics, in order to develop systems that have high robustness and reliability, as well as versatility. Several soft and hybrid soft/hard robots have been demonstrated. However, many bottlenecks still exist in order to incorporate within their structure, the distributed actuation and sensing, and to develop efficient control strategies, as well as to develop reliable systems that can operate in the real world.
On the other hand, many applications can benefit from the development of efficient soft continuum manipulators, at different scales, and that can operate in various environments like air and water, and in the human body.

In this workshop we aim to gather experts in engineering, material science, computer science, and robotics to highlight the interesting characteristics of the current approaches, discuss their pros and cons and delineate the main issues to be solved. Moreover, the range of possible applications will be discussed to provide insights and guidelines on the next steps to be accomplished by the research community for real world operation. In this workshop we aim to gather experts in engineering, material science, computer science, and robotics to highlight the interesting characteristics of the current approaches, discuss their pros and cons and delineate the main issues to be solved. Moreover, the range of possible applications will be discussed to provide insights and guidelines on the next steps to be accomplished by the research community for real world operation.

Confirmed Speakers

SpeakerAffiliationCountry
Jessica Burghner Kahrs
University of Toronto
Canada
Jianin Wu
Sun Yat-Sen University
China
Cecilia Laschi
National University Singapore
Singapore
Christian Duriez
INRIA
France
Xin Dong
University of Nottingham
UK
Matteo Cianchetti
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna
Italy
Christos Bergeles
Kings College London
UK
Rongjie Kang
Tianjin University
China
Hugo Rodrigue
Sung Kyun Kwan University
South Corea
Andry Norton
Rolls Royce
UK
This workshop is supported by the IEEE Technical Committee on Soft Robotics since it aims at bringing together distinguished researchers from the fields of engineering, material science, computer science, and robotics to explore the potentials of soft continuum manipulators and soft hybrid rigid systems whole exploring the range of possible real-world applications.