Workshop on Functional Adaptiveness in Soft Sensors and Sensing Technology

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.