About
UK-RAS Task Group on Soft Robotics
Mission
Soft robotics is a recently emerged field of robotics that has grown substantially in the last years. It extends the conventional robot design approach by using a wider range of new, often soft, materials including silicon, smart materials, polymers, hydrogels, and many others. The result is a highly interdisciplinary approach to robotic design with a substantial potential to provide novel robotic solutions for a wide range of sectors, including, agriculture, health, industry, entertainment, and many others. The UK is at the forefront of this new approach and is home to a number of world-leading research groups. To strengthen this position and to enable a maturation of this field this Strategic Task Group aims to achieve the following three goals.
To establish an industry advisory club to facilitate a transfer to real-world applications
To identify grand challenges, to develop benchmark tests, and to establish a recurrent research competition
To widen the research community and attract non-roboticists to the field
First, the industry advisory club will establish a closer link between academic research and the needs in industry. This will facilitate the identification and development of novel solutions for industrial challenges with the help of soft technologies.
Second, the definition of benchmark tests will help to identify the biggest bottlenecks and establish a focus for the research community. Corresponding competitions will help to introduce younger researchers to the most urgent challenges and will engage them with soft robotics on a deeper level.
Third, the approach of soft robotics, by its nature, is highly interdisciplinary. The field needs expertise from a wide range of research communities including Chemistry, Biology, Material Science, Physics, etc. Moreover, to being able to transform mere technology into useful and accepted machines, we also need to engage with researchers from Ethics, Social Science, Psychology and Art.
Academic Lead
Principal Investigator, Helmut Hauser (University of Bristol), helmut.hauser@bristol.ac.uk
Co-PI, Thrishantha Nanayakkara (Imperial College London), t.nanayakkara@imperial.ac.uk
Co-PI, Fumiya Iida (Cambridge University), fi224@cam.ac.uk
Team
Partners
Academic Partner
Jonathan Rossiter (University of Bristol)
Adam Stokes (The University of Edinburgh)
Perla Maiolino (University of Oxford)
Kaspar Althoefer (Queen Mary University of London)
Andrew Conn (University of Bristol)
Hermes Gadelha (University of Bristol)
James Herbert-Read (University of Cambridge, Zoology)
Fritz Vollrath (University of Oxford, Zoology)
Mirko Kovac (Imperial College London)
Dana Damian (University of Sheffield)
Shuhei Miyashita (University of Sheffield)
Sina Sareh (Royal College of Art)
Helge Wurdemann (University College London)
Industrial Partners and Research Centers
OCADO (www.ocado.com)
BT (www.bt.com)
RACE (www.race.ukaea.uk)
Foster and Partner (www.fosterandpartners.com)
TubeTech (www.tubetech.com)
AMRC – Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (University of Sheffield) (www.amrc.co.uk)
Technology Innovation Transforming Child Health (www.titch.org.uk)
NIHR Children & Young People MedTech Co-coperative (cypmedtech.nihr.ac.uk)
Shadow Robot Company (www.shadowrobot.com)
Save the Elephants (www.savetheelephants.org)