IEEE RAM- Call for Papers

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The past few years have seen a significant increase of research activities focusing on the use of active or inherent material compliance in robotic systems, generally known as soft robotics. The underlying reason is the importance of soft and deformable structures to develop robotic systems that are safer, cheaper and more adaptable than the level that can be achieved by the conventional rigid-material robots. Soft robotic systems are characterized by several unique aspects like their elastic and deformable bodies, large number of degrees of freedom, possible use of unconventional material and the involvement of intrinsic passive mechanical dynamics. In order to properly handle the characteristics, it is crucial to understand the modern view of intelligence, commonly referred to as embodied intelligence or morphological computation, which emphasizes the importance of the task distribution among the brain or controller of a robot, the morphology such as shape, size and materials composing the robot; as well as the environment. In this modern view of intelligence, optimizing the design of the soft robots are therefore of a great importance. While the design optimization can be either or both led by machines and/or humans, or taking inspiration from biological systems, it will eventually decide the behavior and characteristics of the robot.

The special issue of “Design Optimization of Soft Robots” in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine aims to summarize the state of the art and disseminate the current advances on the design optimization of soft robots. The desired outcome of this special issue is a general consensus of the shared scientific goals, the relevant perspective and challenges in the research field, as well as high impact applications.

Topics of Interest
We invite both original research or review/position papers of topics related to design optimization of soft robots, both those focusing on the use of active compliance or inherent material compliance. The topics include but not limited to the followings:

Additive manufacturing for model-free design automation
Bio-inspired approaches for design optimization of soft robots
Brain-soft body co-optimization
Design of artificial skin and stretchable sensors
Design optimization for soft and safe physical human-robot interactions
Design optimization in continuum robots
Design optimization in soft arms, manipulation and grasping
Design optimization in self-healing soft robots
Design optimization through modeling and simulation of soft bodies
Morphological computation and embodied intelligence
Optimizing soft actuator design
Soft modular robots
Soft robot design optimization for energy efficiency
Wearable robots design optimization

Tentative Schedule/Important Dates

1 February 2020 - Submission deadline

10 April 2020 - End of the first review round

20 April 2020 - First decision recommendation to EiC by GEs

1 May 2020 - First decision communicated to authors by EiC

15 June 2020 - Revised paper submitted\Start of the second round of review

1 August 2020 - End of the second review round

10 August 2020 - Final decision recommendation to EiC by GEs

20 August 2020 - Final acceptance decision communicated to authors

1 September 2020 - Guest Editorial, Order of Publication and Cover Story\Pictures to EiC by GEs

10 September 2020 - final manuscripts uploaded by authors

20 September 2020 - final manuscripts forwarded to publisher

10 December 2020 - issue mailed to all members

 

Submission Procedures

The submission procedures can be obtained from the IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine website: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=100. Papers submitted to the Special Issue will undergo the usual reviewing process of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine. For further information on this Special Issue, please refer to the web site of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine.

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