IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2013 - 25

and simulation techniques of soft bodies, 5) fabrication and control of soft
bodies, 6) interdisciplinary interaction
with biological/medical sciences, material sciences, chemistry, and other
related disciplines, and 7) soft robotics
applications.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Figure 1. (a) A soft gripper based on jamming granular material, which is able to pick
up unfamiliar objects with a widely varying shape and surface, (b) an octopus-inspired
robot whose arms are modeled based on the characteristic muscle of the octopus,
(c) a caterpillar-inspired soft bodied rolling robot, and (d) a foldable robotic system
based on the concept of origami design. [Images courtesy of Hod Lipson (Cornell
University), Cecilia Laschi (SSSA; image: London Science Museum/Jennie Hills),
Barry A. Trimmer (Tufts University), and Jamie Paik (EPFL).]

Figure 2. The participants of ETH Summer School on Soft Robotics, June 2012.

2012 to bring together scientists and
engineers with different backgrounds
and disciplines, providing the opportunity to share the latest publications, technologies, experiences, and other relevant
information among those with a similar
interests in soft-body robotic systems.
The Organizational Structure
and Priority Areas
The main organizational structure of
the TC consists of the four cochairs
and several founding members. The

current cochairs of the TC are Fumiya
Iida, Cecilia Laschi, Akio Ishiguro,
and Robert Wood. The founding
members are Dario Floreano, Rolf
Pfeifer, Carmel Majidi, Kyujin Cho,
Hod Lipson, Daniela Rus, Barry A.
Trimmer, and Maarja Kruusmaa.
As the first crucial effort to organize
the TC, it was decided that the priority
areas for the TC would include 1) scientific problems related to soft-bodied
robots, 2) soft materials for robots, 3)
soft actuators and sensors, 4) modeling

Activities Organized by
or Related to the TC
Toward the establishment of the TC, a
wide range of activities has been initiated in the last few years:
● Organized sessions on soft robotics
and on smart materials and actuators for soft robotics in the IEEE
International Conference on Biomedical Robotics (BioRob 2012),
24-27 June 2012
● Eidgenössische
Te c h n i s c h e
Hochschule (ETH) Summer School
on Soft Robotics (Figure 2), Zürich,
Switzerland, 18-22 June 2012
● Special Issue on Soft Robotics in
Journal of Advanced Robotics 26(7),
2012
● Special Session on Soft Robotics at
the 2011 European Future Technologies Conference (FET11), Budapest,
4-6 May 2011
● Swiss-Japan Joint Seminar on Soft
Robotics: Morphology, Materials,
and Functionalities, University of
Tokyo, 20-23 June 2010.
Since its official formation, the
TC has been organizing the activities
in a more effective way and, in 2013
alone, there are several major events:
● International Workshop on Soft
Robotics and Morphological
Computation, Monte Verità, Ascona,
Switzerland, 14-19 July 2013
● Organized sessions on soft technologies for wearable robots at the IEEE
International Conference on
Intelligent Robots and Systems
(IROS), 3-7 November 2013.
Because of the nature of soft robotics
as an interdisciplinary field, the workshop at Monte Verità, for example, will
be attended by more than 100 participants from all over the world with
17 invited speakers from various scientific disciplines. The speakers include

september 2013

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