Soft Robotics Feb-March 2020 Newsletter
March 2020
Highlighted News
* April issue of Soft Robotics is already online
* The importance of soft robotics is acknowledged in EU publications on industrial human-robot collaboration
* SMART Innovative Training Network is recruiting PhD Students. More information can be found here
* Special issue of the Actuators journal on “Electroactive Polymer Actuators for Soft Robotics II”. Submission deadline: 31 July 2020
* New full podcast episodes are available here
New Videos
* Underwater Snail-o-Bot gets kick from light (Feb 2020)
* Eversion and retraction of a soft robot towards the exploration of coral reefs (Feb 2020)
* Soft machines lab introduces new soft, multifunctional composite (Feb 2020)
* Robotic gripping and handling of seafood (March 2020)
* The gripper guys explain how soft robotics solves for variability (Mar 2020)
* In-hand manipulation with RBO Hands (Apr 2020)
Published Journal
* Related view and review:
- Current advances in soft robotics: Best papers from RoboSoft 2018 (Front. Robot. AI., Apr 2020)
* Soft arm, manipulation, grasping:
- Programmable droplet manipulation by a magnetic-actuated robot (Sci. Adv., Feb 2020)
- Universal SMP gripper with massive and selective capabilities for multiscaled, arbitrarily shaped objects (Sci. Adv., Feb 2020)
- Design and prototyping soft–rigid tendon-driven modular grippers using interpenetrating phase composites materials (Int. J. Robot. Res., Feb 2020)
- Octopus arm-inspired tapered soft actuators with suckers for improved grasping (Soft Robotics, Feb 2020)
* Soft locomotion, compliant locomotion:
- Deformable microswimmer in an external force field (Phys. Rev. Fluids, Mar 2020)
- A 1mm-thick miniatured mobile soft robot with mechanosensation and multimodal locomotion (IEEE RA-L, Apr 2020)
* Soft sensing, artificial skin, electronic skin:
- Sustainable manufacturing of sensors onto soft systems using self-coagulating conductive pickering emulsions (Sci. Robot, Feb 2020)
- CoboSkin: Soft robot skin with variable stiffness for safer human-robot collaboration (IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., March 2020)
* Soft actuator, flexible actuator, compliant actuator:
- Seamless multimaterial 3D liquid-crystalline elastomer actuators for next-generation entirely soft robots (Sci Adv., Feb 2020)
- Geometric confined pneumatic soft–rigid hybrid actuators (Soft Robotics, Feb 2020)
- Varying mechanical compliance benefits energy efficiency of a knee joint actuator (Mechatronics, April 2020)
* Soft robot application:
- Characterization, simulation and control of a soft helical pneumatic implantable robot for tissue regeneration (IEEE T-MRB, Feb 2020)
* Soft robot fabrication, embodied intelligence, morphological computation, morphological change:
- Vertical fibrous morphology and structure-function relationship in natural and biomimetic suction-based adhesion discs (Matter, Feb 2020)
- Additive manufacturing for self-healing soft robots (Soft Robotics, Mar 2020)
- An untethered isoperimetric soft robot (Sci. Robot, Mar 2020)
- Inverse statics optimization for compound tensegrity robots (IEEE RA-L, March 2020)
- Flexoskeleton printing enables versatile fabrication of hybrid soft and rigid robots (Soft Robotics, Apr 2020)
- Model-based pose control of inflatable eversion robot with variable stiffness (IEEE RA-L, Apr 2020)
- Lightweight highly tunable jamming-based composites (Soft Robotics, Apr 2020)
* Soft matter electronics, stretchable electronics:
- Nanofabrication for all-soft and high-density electronic devices based on liquid metal (Nat. Commun., Feb 2020)
- Soft, wireless periocular wearable electronics for real-time detection of eye vergence in a virtual reality toward mobile eye therapies (Sci Adv., Mar 2020)
Popular Articles
- Underwater Snail-o-Bot gets kick from light (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Feb 2020)
- Vertical fibers in the suckerfish’s suction cup-like fin help it hitchhike (Phys.org, Feb 2020)
- The tentacle bot (Harvard News & Events, Feb 2020)
- One indestructible bug in a soft robotic body (ASME, Mar 2020)
- Stanford engineers create shape-changing, free-roaming soft robot (Stanford News, Mar 2020)
- Engineers 3D print soft, rubbery brain implants (MIT News, Mar 2020)
- Liquid metal that floats on water could make transformable robots (NewScientist, Mar 2020)
- Soft robot takes cues from a sea slug’s swimming stroke (Nature Research Highlight, Mar 2020)
- A resilient robotic bug (Advanced Science News, March 2020)
- Thanks to ‘flexoskeletons,’ these insect-inspired robots are faster and cheaper to make (Jacobs School News, Apr 2020),
As usual, if you would like your announcement to appear in the next newsletter or have any questions / suggestions / comments, please do not hesitate to send an email to the following address: softrobotics-tc-nl-org@eng.cam.ac.uk
Best Regards,
Newsletter & Podcast Team
(SM Hadi Sadati, Marwa Eldiwiny, Perla Maiolino, Helmut Hauser, Ryuma Niiyama, Surya G. Nurzaman, Fumiya Iida)