IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2017 - 19

Figure 7. The finalists and organizers of the SMRC.

Soft Robot Speed Challenge
This was a challenge to find the team
with the fastest robot, driven by soft
actuators, for moving through a given
obstacle course. To compete in the challenge, the robot had to be smaller than a
1-m cube, and its body had to be made
of soft materials.
The soft robots were required to traverse a given obstacle course in the
shortest time possible. As the track consisted of vertical undulations and obstacles, the robots were required to
maneuver down the path and around the
obstacles. The side and front views of the
obstacle course are shown in Figure 6.
The evaluation criteria for the speed
challenge included the following factors:
1) The length, width, and height of the
robot were measured, and the largest
dimension of the robot was noted as
the body length.
2) The speed was noted as the number
of body lengths traveled by the robot
per second.
3) For each obstacle that the robot came
in contact with, 1% of the final score
was deducted.
4) The robots with onboard power supply (untethered robots) or robots that
were completely driven by soft actuators were awarded a bonus-5% of
the final score.
5) Each team was able to take three trial
runs, and the best of the three runs
was recorded as the team's score.
6) The robots that could not complete
the race path were awarded no points.
7) If none of the robots completed the
race path, the robot that traversed the

maximum distance would be declared the winner.
After the consideration of these
factors by a panel of judges, the team
with the highest score would become
the winner.
There were five finalists for the
SMRC speed challenge (Figure 7):
Team WPI Salamander (Worcester
Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts),
Teams ZJUnoomy and Soft Challenger
(Zhejiang University, China), and
Teams SoRollBot NUS and WormBot
NUS (National University of Singapore).
After an intense competition (Figure 8),
WPI Salamander was the fastest, with
ZJUnoomy coming in a close second.
However, ZJUnoomy obtained a bonus
for completely driving its robot with
soft actuators, while WPI Salamander
did not receive this bonus. Finally,
the panel of judges, after some debate,

reached the decision that both ZJUnoomy and WPI Salamander would
be tied for first place.
The Soft Component
Technology Challenge
This challenge aimed to showcase
newly developed actuator, sensor, or
other component technologies that
advance the field of soft robotics. The
entries were evaluated based on their
significance, originality, functionality,
and quality of documentation. They
were challenged to contribute to solving
pertinent issues in soft robotics, be original compared to existing literature, be
based soundly on experimental data
and benchmarked against the state of
the art, and be properly documented in
terms of the design, modeling, fabrication, and testing.
A total of 23 entries from nine countries were received, and 18 were shortlisted as finalists, who demonstrated
their prototypes to a panel of judges at
ICRA 2017 (Figure 9). The teams were
scored by the judges based on the evaluation criteria. After two days of
intense presentations and questions
and answers, Team EPFL-LIS-1 (École
Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,
Switzerland) emerged victorious with
their work "Dual-Stiffness Frame for
Collision Resilient Quadcopters" and
won the first prize of US$1,000.
In addition, two second prizes of
US$500 each were awarded to Team
Soft Pioneers (Zhejiang University,

Figure 8. The SMRC soft robot
speed challenge.

(continued on page 21)
SEPTEMBER 2017

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2017