Workshop on Functional Adaptiveness in Soft Sensors and Sensing Technology

Time: Tuesday, April 3, 2023 (Half day)
Location: Singapore
This workshop is officially endorsed by IEEE RAS Technical Committee Human-Robot Interaction and Coordination

Registration

Abstract

Sensor morphology has been a long-standing attractive research theme to biologists, cognitive scientists, and most recently, robotic engineers thanks to the rapid emergence of soft robotics. While biological sensing systems often evolved with adaptive morphology enabling their functionality in various environments, soft robotic sensors are usually designed for specific tasks in well-defined environments, limiting the adaptability to less constructed real-world applications, e.g., rescue robots in disasters. This has inspired robotic engineers to exploit morphological approaches for functional adaptiveness in soft sensors and sensing technology. Despite the advancement in this theme, there are still numerous fundamental gaps in matching the adaptability of robotic systems to that biological systems. This workshop aims to discuss and summarize the current progress and viable technology of functional adaptiveness in soft sensors and sensing technology and to extend our understanding of the role of sensor morphology in accomplishing different tasks in different environments. We are heading towards integrative debates across biology and engineering points of view that are expected to shed light on basic guidelines for systematic investigation and development of a new way of soft-sensing systems for soft robots.

Overview

A flexible body allows soft robots to adaptively self-condition their behaviors through physical interaction with the environment, as commonly seen in biological creatures. From this perspective, the design for soft devices should tightly couple shape-changing ability and morphological aspects (i.e., geometrical and material properties) of the body with the task-oriented changeable environments for high-level adaptiveness and functions. Soft sensory systems are one of those that are benefited from such a paradigm. The soft body should be used not only to accommodate complex stimuli comfortably but also as an essential constituent for the creation of robot perception, as suggested by the concept of Morphological Computation and Embodiment. For years, much effort has been paid to elaborate on this. However, current achievements in robotics are still far from what natural counterparts can do.

On the other hand, adaptiveness in biological sensing and perception is often achieved through active changing of the sensorized body, both spatiotemporally and morphologically. For example, rodents frequently reorient their sensory whiskers for better assessment of their surroundings and localization of themselves, even in dark spaces. The such ability helps increase survival skills when undergoing unexpected variations in natural habitats. This also inspires robotic applications, especially in soft sensing and perception. Researchers have recently attempted to develop soft sensors that can actively change their morphology in different sensing tasks and operating scenarios, mimicking those in nature. In general, the sensor morphology is treated as a mechanical filter or converter for physical stimuli that aids the machine's perception or reduces computation needs for data processing. Among recent approaches, various approaches include variable stiffness, changeable shapes, multi-phase materials, and adaptive algorithms.

Despite these efforts, there are still many existing challenges to be addressed toward the implementation of adaptive sensing, such as 1) understanding the role of morphological change in interaction with the environment for the realization of unforeseen sensing functionalities; 2) implementation of morphological designs by orchestrating soft bodies with affordable actuation and sensing performance; 3) sensing strategies that can coordinate morphology and behavioral control policy accordingly; 4) and the development of those practical enabling technologies, e.g., fabrication methods and materials that could accelerate the research progress on this particular topic.

This workshop is dedicated to furthering our research landscape on sensor morphology per se and groundbreaking its role in robotic systems in an integrative manner, not an individual component. We also focus on in-depth panel discussions among worldwide experts in different disciplines about current challenges in this topic and possibilities toward a pipeline for shaping biological abstractions into 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:

Benjamin Tee

National University of Singapore

Helmut Hauser

University of Bristol

Koh Hosoda

Osaka University

Liang He

University of Oxford

Lucia Beccai

Istituto Italiano Di Technologia

Poramate Manoonpong

University of Southern Denmark

Surya Nurzaman

Monash University

Van Anh Ho

Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Workshop Format:

This workshop will be held in a hybrid format: Onsite (Singapore) 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 (or breakout sessions on Online meeting tool) and panel discussions. Details can be found below:

The invited talks will be limited to a maximum of 20 mins followed by 5 mins of Q&A. 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 have at least 5 posters in the interactive session

We expect to see many colleagues at this event by sending the abstract of your relevant works

Important Dates: