IROS 2015 Workshop - New Frontiers and Applications for Soft Robotics

Hamburg - October 2, 2015  

2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
IROS 2015 - Gateway to the Era of Robots
October 2, 2015, Hamburg, Germany

Abstract

The full day Workshop on “New Frontiers and Applications for Soft Robots” will attract experts across multiple fields in the soft robotics community and will be a unique occasion to gather the most prominent scientific actors of the field and industrial representatives.

Soft robotics research is providing interesting achievements and there is a general opinion that it can find application in several industrial sectors. This trend is also witnessed by an increasing number of international projects where soft robotics has a key role in achieving improved functionalities in real world scenarios at industrial level (e.g. EU funded projects like STIFF-FLOP IP, SMART-E ITN).

Thus this workshop is extremely timely to help focus on the needs from industry and services, that may find responses from soft robotics and to fill the gap between laboratory and industrial products. To this aim, invited speakers not only from academia but also from industry will present and discuss real world issues and possible applications where soft robotics can represent a game changer.

The soft robotics community is already very active and it is still growing, thus the workshop agenda includes talks and roundtable sessions, as well as poster sessions during the breaks. This will allow accommodating an active participation of several participants to foster discussions, in-depth analysis as well as to identify needs, promote collaborations and ideas for using soft robots especially in those areas that are off limits for traditional rigid robots.

Topics

• Soft actuators
• Soft and flexible sensors
• Stretchable electronics
• Highly deformable smart materials
• Energy harvesting devices based on soft materials
• Modelling and simulation techniques of soft bodies
• Control of soft robots
• Scientific issues related to soft-bodied robots
• Soft robotics applications 

Program and Speakers:

8:30 - 8:50 - Matteo Cianchetti, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna
8:50 - 9:10 - Cecilia Laschi, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna
9:10 - 9:40 - Rich Walker, Shadow Robot
9:40 - 10:10 - Benno Pichlmaier, AGCO
10:10 - 10:50 - Coffe Break and Poster Session
10:50 - 11:20 - Jonathan Rossiter, University of Bristol
11:20 - 11:50 - Kaspar Althoefer, King’s College of London
11:50 - 12:20 - Robert Katzschmann, MIT 
12:20 - 12:50 - Roundtable discussion I - Moderator: Nicola Nosengo
12:50 - 14:00 - Lunch Break
14:00 - 14:30 - Kyujin Cho, Seoul National University  
14:30 - 15:00 - Rebecca Kramer, Purdue University
15:00 - 15:30 - Li Wen, Beihang University
15:30 - 16:10 - Coffee Break and Poster Session
16:10 - 16:40 - Yong-Lae Park, Carnegie Mellon University  
16:40 - 17:10 - Ryuma Niiyama, University of Tokyo
17:10 - 17:40 - Roundtable discussion II - Moderator: Nicola Nosengo
17:40 - Wrap up and closing

You can download the full program from this link.

Abstracts accepted as poster presentation:

Download: Speakers' presentations 

  Organisers

Matteo Cianchetti, Helmut Hauser, Fumiya Iida, Jonathan Rossiter, 
Laura Margheri and Cecilia Laschi