Soft Robotics

The Soft Robotics research area focuses on developing robots whose structure or material properties result in compliant behavior. This inherently interdisciplinary research draws on materials science, robotics, and biology to create systems that can move and interact with the world in fundamentally different ways than traditional rigid robots. This research aims to address challenges in areas such as manipulation, operation in extreme or unpredictable environments, and the development of bio-inspired systems that replicate the flexibility and adaptability found in natural organisms.

The research is grounded in a wide variety of application domains, including agriculture, inspection, exploration, and assistive technologies. Prior work in this area has included grippers for fruit picking, bio-inspired robots to investigate terrestrial and marine locomotion, and growing robots for large-scale manipulation and inspection. This research area investigates the design, modeling, fabrication, and control of soft robots, with an emphasis on translating laboratory innovations into real-world systems.