The Hard Parts of Soft Robots

The form and shape of modern robots are rapidly changing from rigid, stiff, but precise machines to more compliant, adaptable, but inherently underactuated systems; often called soft robotics. The emergence of soft robots is in part motivated by the need for safe robotic technologies when human interaction is frequent. However, another motivation for designing soft robotic systems is to exploit the compliant mechanics and high degree of freedom of these systems for adaptability, actuation, and sensing. The majority of efforts to build soft robots utilize a standard toolkit of silicone elastomer casting, pneumatic actuation, and stretchable conducting elements. In this talk, I will present our efforts to design and build robots capable of compliance control, reconfiguration, and adaptability using laminate and 3D printing techniques, where “softness” is derived from the configuration of rigid constituent materials. This will focus on three research efforts: compliance control through sliding- layer laminates, insect-inspired 3D printing for “flexoskeleton” robots, and shape changing robot feet for improved mobility of legged robots. While these efforts focus primarily on the mechanical domain of soft robots, I will highlight opportunities for sensor and electronics integration through these fabrication approaches.

Hosts: Feifei Qian and Pierluigi Nuzzo CCI: http://cci.usc.edu
MHI: http://mhi.usc.edu