Computational design of soft robots (CD-SoRo) workshop

Soft robots have tremendous potential. They can conform to uneven surfaces, squeeze through small gaps, safely interact with humans, absorb shocks, spring forward, and bounce back from damage.

So: where are all the soft robots?

Designing and controlling soft, jiggling, deforming bodies is a major unsolved challenge. The frameworks we've developed over the past two centuries for designing rigid bodies do not readily extend to soft bodies.

Now's the time to tackle this problem. A diversity of computational design and fabrication technologies are just now emerging with the potential to help (and perhaps "solve") soft robotics.

This workshop aims to galvanize roboticists, computer scientists, and materials scientists into action by articulating the problems, proposing new solutions, highlighting recent advances, situating this work in broader contexts, and discussing how best to proceed as a field.

When? The cd-soro workshop will take place Oct 23, 2022

Where? at the IROS conference in Kyoto, Japan and online.

What? invited talks, panel and group discussions, lightning talks, posters, tutorials and demos.

Topics will include, but are not limited to: simulation; optimization algorithms; evolutionary-, learning-, and graident-based methods; sim-to-real; human-computer/robot interaction, metamaterials, digital fabrication.

Want to get involved?

Submit a <1 page abstract + figure here by October 9.

Please indicate if you are submitting a poster, demo, or tutorial.

Submission should cover soon-to-be or recently published research, or ongoing work with preliminary results.