ROBOSOFT WORKSHOP 2021: Healable Soft Robots

WORKSHOP DATE: 12 APRIL 2021

We accepted presentations no longer than 15 minutes to be given at the workshop.

PRESENTATIONS’ DEADLINE: 26 MARCH 2021

SUBMISTION OF CONTRIBUTIONS IS NOW CLOSED.

REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED.

ZOOM DETAILS

Please note that the event is free to attend. However, one’s registration details should include a motivations statement that should provide your intentions on why you would like to participate in the SMART workshop.

Workshop abstract

Soft materials used for the construction of soft robots are susceptible to various types of damage, particularly in dynamic unpredictable environments, limiting the lifetime of these robotic systems. This vulnerability is recently being addressed in academia by both material scientists and roboticists  who use diverse, novel approaches to make soft robots resilient to damage. Latest developments in self-healing materials have enhanced both healing capacity and mechanical strength. This led to the creation of soft robots with resilience incorporated in the material level, that have the ability to heal from various macroscopic and microscopic damages. Resilience has been embedded on the robotic level as well, through redundant systems, self-repair mechanisms, and damage-compensatory behavior after self-diagnosis. Most of these approaches offer an efficient and economical solution, if damage can be detected and measures can be taken fully autonomously. Consequently, damage sensing in soft robots will be of  increasing importance in the coming years. Based on the emerging developments on soft sensors and even self-healing soft sensors, health monitoring systems can be incorporated to provide autonomy. This workshop intends to build bridges between the novel fields of self-healing mechanisms, damage sensing and soft robotics. Due to the cutting-edge nature of this research field, it is important to share and discuss capabilities, limitations, requirements and drivers among the three fields.

INVITED SPEAKERS

DESCRIPTION

We have invited seven speakers who have a proven record of excellence in their research in the new field of resilient and healable soft robots.

We are inviting workshop participants to submit their abstracts to this workshop that we plan to hold virtually. Selected abstracts will be presented in a 10-minute-long presentations followed by a 5 minutes Q&A session.

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

Please note that all timings are in Central European Summer Time (CEST)

WORKSHOP INSPIRATIONS AND IDEAS

All biological organisms have internal mechanisms to handle unforeseen damages incurred to their body. Such capabilities are recently being introduced in their artificial counterparts, especially in the field of soft robotics.

This workshop intents to bring together material scientists that investigate self-healing mechanisms, researchers that investigate (healable) soft sensors and soft robotic researchers in order to share and discuss novel capabilities/algorithms, inherent limitations/constraints and requirements among these three fields to spur further developments in this novel multidisciplinary research on resilient and healable soft robots.

We believe that adding resilience or a healing capacity can have a major contribution in developing soft robotic components with extended lifetimes. Extending the lifetime is both economical, as maintenance and offline times can be reduced, as well as ecological.