***News:
Access link for online participants is here
Please register for ROBOSOFT 2022 through this link:
Early bird registration has been extended to March 4th
In addition to Full in-person access and Full virtual access, One day-access-only in-person registration option should be available soon
Best poster award - sponsored by PROBOSCIS project: 100€ cash for the winner
List of poster contributors can be found here
*Stay tuned for latest update
Abstract
Recent advances in materials and manufacturing approaches have opened new possibilities for sensor design in the context of soft robotics. Inspired by the remarkable performance of biological sensing systems, we believe that understanding biological solutions can provide useful design guidelines to develop bio-inspired soft sensors. However, soft sensing is still far from allowing natural-like perception. This is mainly due to the multiple aspects that need to be considered in the design, including materials and structure, the implementation of an appropriate computational layer (neurons), and their interplay with sensed environment. In this workshop, we aim to discuss how the lessons from biology in morphological sensing may inform and benefit feasible implementation of embodied sensing in soft robotics. Besides the presentation, the workshop will feature in-depth panel discussions among biologists, roboticists, neuroscientists, and material scientists about current challenges and ways forward towards a more holistic pipeline from biological system to abstraction to practical soft robotics applications.
Overview
For years, the basis of shape-changing, morphological design has benefited the flexible functions of soft-bodied robots, which can accommodate the high uncertainties of the surrounding environment, and more importantly, utilize the interaction with the environment for accomplishment of complicated tasks. As an indispensable matter of the motor-sensory system, it is obvious that sensing should also be benefited from the computational properties of the soft body. Since such sensors may respond to a wide range of stimuli, such as shape-changing or interaction with the surrounding environment, methods for efficient learning are also of great interest.
However, compared to actuation, morphological sensing is found to be extremely complicated to implement in soft-bodied robots. The difficulty does not only come from the design and fabrication of soft sensors that allow embedded sensing, but also it relies on how to implement biological hypotheses in soft robotics scenarios. As a result, regardless of recent advances in materials and fabrication, soft sensors are still far from nature’s sophisticated sensing functions. Natural sensing is abundant, somewhat redundant, but still working harmonically. On the other hand, soft sensing solutions are currently not optimized for controlling soft robots in the real environment.
Therefore several issues emerging in the field need deep discussion, like (but not solely): to what extent should nature’s sensing mechanisms be mimicked, what are the most promising technologies and materials that should be utilized, how to include the interaction with the environment in the loop, and, more importantly, what is the criteria for taking sources of inspiration for soft sensing.
In this workshop, we aim to discuss how the lessons from biology in morphological sensing may benefit feasible implementation of embodied sensing in soft robotics. We also focus on in-depth panel discussion among worldwide experts in different disciplines including biology, engineering and material science about current challenges in this topic, and possibilities toward a pipeline for shaping biological abstractions to practical soft robotics applications.
Invited Speakers
We are glad to announce these following speakers (in alphabetical order) will have officially confirmed to have a talk at our event:
Confirmed:
Dr. Chiara Bartolozzi
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
Prof. Volker Duerr
Bielefeld University
Prof. Fumiya Iida
University of Cambridge
Prof. Lynette Jones
MIT
Prof. Nathan Lepora
University of Bristol
Prof. Shlomo Magdassi, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Prof. Thrishantha Nanayakkara
Imperial College
Prof. Mike Tolley
UC San Diego
Prof. Fritz Vollrath
Oxford University
Workshop Format
This workshop will be held in a hybrid format: Onsite (Edinburg, Scotland) and Online. (see here for a glance at the program)
We plan to avoid invited talk-oriented WS style, where common participants hardly have time to join discussions with speakers due to lengthy talks, by planning reasonable timing for talks and focusing on fostering poster sessions and panel discussions. Details can be found below:
The invited talks will be limited to a maximum of 15 mins and 5 mins for Q&A (see Workshop timetable for more details). Speakers will be required to shortly summarize their results, while also indicating vision or discussion points facilitating interactions with the participants.
Each session of the WS will be featured by invited talks, followed by thorough discussions among speakers and participants. Topics for discussion will be brought by organizers based on suggestions from speakers and participants.
Posters will be called in advance to promote the interactive session. We will encourage invited speakers to send their students/colleagues to the presenting posters at the interactive session.
We expect to see many colleagues in this event by sending the abstract of your relevant works
Important Dates:
Deadline for abstract submission: March 8th, 2022 (UK Time)
Notification of acceptance: March 15th, 2022 (UK Time)
Sponsored by:
