RoboSoft 2020 is now online!

JOIN THE VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

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While a virtual conference is not what we initially intended, we are nonetheless grateful for the outpouring of support and enthusiasm from our scientific community. We have been reminded of the importance of our community, and the importance of the work we are doing together. Soft robot technologies have been of interest in part due to their built-in safety at the material level, and their potential for conformable interfacing with humans and in-body applications. Now more than ever, we are motivated to continue development of such medical and assistive robots, and to help one another to stay safe and healthy. More generally, we are excited to get back to a world where we can interact in-person and work toward the impactful applications of soft robotic technologies!

This year, RoboSoft received 237 paper submissions (up 35% from last year), demonstrating the growth of our community. Through the hard work of the Program Committee, Associate Editors, and Reviewers, we were able to select 130 high-quality papers for presentation (a 55% acceptance rate). Through this virtual gathering, we hope that you will be able to stay informed of our community’s recent developments and breakthroughs, and we encourage you to contact authors with your questions to maintain the spirit of the post-talk discussions that we would typically have at an in-person meeting.

We hope that you and your loved ones are safe and well, and we wish you the best during these challenging times. We further hope to see you in person next year at RoboSoft 2021!

Sincerely,

Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, General Chair
Mike Tolley, Program Chair
Sang Yup Kim, Finance Chair

While we're disappointed that we were unable to host the RoboSoft 2020 competition live, we nonetheless had amazing entries! Check out the videos below to see what invited teams prepared for the competition. These entries showcase the novelties of soft robots, such as resilience to impacts, body compliance, and delicate manipulation.

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Winners:

Towards Vision-Based Robotic Skins: A Data-Driven, Multi-Camera Tactile Sensor
Camill Trueeb, Carmelo Sferrazza, Raffaello D'Andrea

Runners up:

Liquid Pouch Motors: Printable Planar Actuators Driven by Liquid-To-Gas Phase Change for Shape-Changing Interfaces
Koya Narumi, Hiroki Sato, Kenichi Nakahara, Young Ah Seong, Kunihiko Morinaga, Yasuaki Kakehi, Ryuma Niiyama, Yoshihiro Kawahara

Finalists:

A Boundary-Constrained Swarm Robot with Granular Jamming
Mohammad Amin Karimi, Vahid Alizadehyazdi, Bruno-Pier Busque, Heinrich Jaeger, Matthew Spenko

A Novel Pneumatic Soft Snake Robot Using Traveling-Wave Locomotion in Constrained Environments
Xinda Qi, Hongyang Shi, Thassyo Pinto, Xiaobo Tan

AFREEs: Active Fiber Reinforced Elastomeric Enclosures
Kyle Yoshida, Xinyi Ren, Laura Blumenschein, Allison M. Okamura, Ming Luo

Development of Continuum Spine Mechanism for Humanoid Robot: Biomimetic Supple and Curvilinear Spine Driven by Tendon
Yuriko Kakehashi, Kei Okada, Masayuki Inaba

Electromechanical Characterization of 3D Printable Conductive Elastomer for Soft Robotics
Suhan Kim, Sukjun Kim, Houriyeh Majditehran, Dinesh Patel, Carmel Majidi, Sarah Bergbreiter

Wrinkled Soft Sensor with Variable Afferent Morphology: Case of Bending Actuation
Qiukai Qi, Van Ho

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