Recipes for soft robotic artificial organisms

Institute of Microengineering - Distinguished Lecture

Abstract: Soft robotics has the potential to replicate the sophisticated movements and behaviours of biological organisms and ultimately to generate a new paradigm of soft robotic organisms. To achieve this goal we must combine research in smart materials, actuation, sensing, energy storage, behaviour and multi-agent collaboration, to name but a few.  In this talk we will examine the key components of a soft robotic organism, delve into potential uses and review the work we, and others, have undertaken to achieve truly autonomous soft robotic organisms.  These include soft material actuation, metabolic replication, death and degradation and environmental costs and benefits.  We will highlight the RowBot, a self-sufficient environmentally-interactive robot able to eat and metabolise pollution and an important precursor to artificial organisms.  We will ultimately touch on what a new species of soft robotic artificial organism could mean for us and the planet.

Bio: Prof Rossiter is Professor of Robotics at Bristol Robotics Laboratory and University of Bristol, EPSRC Research Fellow and head of the Soft Robotics Group.  Previously he was Royal Society research fellow.  He has published over 140 papers on soft robotics and leads major projects on implantable soft robotics, wearable soft assist devices, and biodegradable robotic organisms.  His research covers the spectrum of soft robotics development from smart materials and mechanisms to mathematical modelling of nonlinear behaviours and the fabrication of complete soft robotic machines.