About this Research Topic
This Research Topic is devoted to publishing extended versions of the Best Papers presented at the first international conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft) held on 24-28 April 2018 in Livorno, Italy.
The field of soft robotics has grown significantly in the last decade and has delivered remarkable achievements in terms of new principles, design approaches, technologies, and fabrication techniques. It has developed into a highly vibrant and interdisciplinary research field. It draws from communities that go beyond robotics and engineering by embracing Biology, Material Science, Chemistry and others. The result is a wide range of innovative frameworks that provide new opportunities for robotics. It opens the space for novel applications in medicine, agriculture, health care, education, entertainment, and many others. Furthermore, Soft Robotics is providing a new way to solve existing challenges with alternative means. It enables the implementation of concepts like embodiment and morphological computation. This has the great potential to break free of conventional approaches and to build truly intelligent and autonomous machines and, eventually, to make robotics ubiquitous.
The aim of this Research Topic is to provide an overview of the current research in the soft robotics community. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
*Applied mathematics for soft robotics
* Soft and unconventional actuation systems
* Artificial skin, stretchable sensors and electronics
* Morphological computation
*Force and tactile sensing
*Flexible robots and mechanism design
* Bio-inspired or biomimetic robots based on passive dynamics and unconventional materials
* Continuum robots, flexible robots, reconfigurable robots
* Functional materials, morphologies, and assembly for adaptive robotic systems
* Modeling and simulation of soft bodied robots and structures
* Physical human-robot interactions based on soft technologies
* Soft wearable robotics
* Soft locomotion
* Soft micro- and nano-robots
* Wearable robots
* Underwater soft robotics
Robosoft 2018 has been organized with the valuable contributions of the committee members Professor Cecilia Laschi from the BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Dr Fumiya Iida from the University of Cambridge and Dr Kyujin Cho, from Seoul National University, Korea.
The field of soft robotics has grown significantly in the last decade and has delivered remarkable achievements in terms of new principles, design approaches, technologies, and fabrication techniques. It has developed into a highly vibrant and interdisciplinary research field. It draws from communities that go beyond robotics and engineering by embracing Biology, Material Science, Chemistry and others. The result is a wide range of innovative frameworks that provide new opportunities for robotics. It opens the space for novel applications in medicine, agriculture, health care, education, entertainment, and many others. Furthermore, Soft Robotics is providing a new way to solve existing challenges with alternative means. It enables the implementation of concepts like embodiment and morphological computation. This has the great potential to break free of conventional approaches and to build truly intelligent and autonomous machines and, eventually, to make robotics ubiquitous.
The aim of this Research Topic is to provide an overview of the current research in the soft robotics community. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
*Applied mathematics for soft robotics
* Soft and unconventional actuation systems
* Artificial skin, stretchable sensors and electronics
* Morphological computation
*Force and tactile sensing
*Flexible robots and mechanism design
* Bio-inspired or biomimetic robots based on passive dynamics and unconventional materials
* Continuum robots, flexible robots, reconfigurable robots
* Functional materials, morphologies, and assembly for adaptive robotic systems
* Modeling and simulation of soft bodied robots and structures
* Physical human-robot interactions based on soft technologies
* Soft wearable robotics
* Soft locomotion
* Soft micro- and nano-robots
* Wearable robots
* Underwater soft robotics
Robosoft 2018 has been organized with the valuable contributions of the committee members Professor Cecilia Laschi from the BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Dr Fumiya Iida from the University of Cambridge and Dr Kyujin Cho, from Seoul National University, Korea.
Keywords: Soft Robotics, Morphological Computation, Embodiment, Unconventional Robotics
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