Self-healing and Damage Resilient Soft Robots
Self-healing and Damage Resilient Soft Robots
Bridging smart self-healing materials and robotics
The intrinsic compliance of soft robots provides safety, natural adaptation to its environment, and protects them against mechanical impacts. However, the soft materials used for their construction are susceptible to various types of damage, particularly in dynamic unpredictable environments in which the lifetime of these robotic systems will be limited. This vulnerability is recently addressed in academia by both materials and robotics scientists who use diverse, novel approaches to make soft robots resilient to damage. Latest developments in self-healing materials have enhanced both healing capacity and mechanical strength. This has allowed resilience to be incorporated on the material level in the first soft robots, constructed out of these self-healing materials and able to heal from various damage types. Resilience has been embedded on the robotic level as well, through redundant systems, self-repair mechanisms, and damage compensatory behavior after self-diagnosis. Most of these resilient approaches only offer an efficient and economical solution to the vulnerability of soft robots, if damage can be detected and measures can be taken by the system fully autonomously. Consequently, damage sensing in soft robots will be of an increased importance in the coming years. Based on the emerging researches on soft sensors and even self-healing soft sensors, health monitoring systems can be incorporated in soft robots. This workshop has the intention to build bridges between the novel fields of self-healing mechanisms, damage sensing and soft robotics. Since this combination is cutting edge, it is important to share capabilities, limitations, requirements and drivers among these fields.
When: Monday afternoon, Oct 14.
Where: Room 12, IROS 2024, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Organizers:
Seppe Terryn: Brubotics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and imec
Concepcion Alicia Monje Micharet: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Bram Vanderborght: Brubotics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and imec
Seyedreza Kashef Tabrizian: Brubotics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and imec
Lisbeth Karina Mena Lopez: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
University of Oxford
ETH Zürich
Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna
Please send your abstracts before September 23. Your contribution will be presented as a 2-min poster teaser in the begining of the workshop (in format of a single slide that can contain videos) and a poster stand during coffee and lunch breaks.
Abstract submission (please click)
Notification of acceptance: September 25.
Poster teaser submission deadline: October 4.
We would like to express our gratitude to PAL Robotics Company and Frontiers in Robotics and AI for their endorsement of our workshop.