The anchorage town of Livorno sits in the heart of Tuscany surrounded by the rural landscape of central Italy. The wonderful marina of Livorna set the scene and provided a charming location for an engaging RoboSoft conference. This meeting provided an opportunity for all participants to network with who they may otherwise have not been in contact geographically. The engaging workshops on the first day of the conference gave ample post discussion in the cafes and pizzerias through the harbour town.
I attended the workshop entitled “Soft-bodied structures in nature and robotics towards new trends and opportunities” organised Dr Barbara Mazzolai of the Center for Micro-BioRobotics at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, and Ass. Prof Dr Robert Shepard of the Organic Robotics Lab in Cornell University. The aim of the workshop was to gather researchers from robotics, biology, biophysics, and biomechanics with the key actors of bioinspired soft robotics. The talks included conference plenary speaker Prof Daniel Goldman on the wavicle nature of snakes.
I attended this workshop because I am interested in contributing to the discussion on the development of bioinspired soft robots. Building a bioinspired robot requires a thorough understanding of biomechanics, control, perception, and behaviour of living systems and requires investigation into new materials, sensors, actuators and energy solutions.
The 20 minute talks covered a range of topics in robotic inspiration from animalia, plantae, and bacteria kingdoms. In animals we saw efforts for softer snake robots, gecko-inspired soft robots, minimalistic soft robots for deployment in high numbers, aerial biorobotics, and variable stiffness limbs for turtle and tortoise-inspired robots. In plants, growing robots, humidity controlled shape changing robots, and heliotropism in soft robots. Finally, in bacteria we witnessed shape-programmable millirobots, heard lesson on control from unicellular locomotion, and microrobotic application in medicine, to name a few.
This workshop provided stimulating discussion on this emerging scientific area due to the interaction with biology, materials science, and biophysics communities. As a result, we saw an authoritative overview of the recent advancements in materials, behaviours and mechanisms on selected living systems in animalia, plantae, and bacteria kingdoms. This provided a range of different perspectives and viewpoints in a developing class of soft robots compared with today’s systems, outlining the current opportunities and challenges of bioinspired robotics.
This range of excellent talks set a high standard for the week on the first day, and I am pleased to announce that the proceedings matched the excellence of the workshop. My congratulations to the workshop and conference organisers for a memorable scientific and social experience.
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