ABSTRACT
Rigid-bodied robots generally excel at specific tasks in structured environments, but lack the versatility and adaptability required to interact-with and locomote-within the natural world. To make progress on this problem, my group is working towards a new approach: robotic skins that can wrap around arbitrary soft objects to induce the desired motions and deformations. With the addition of robotic skins, passive soft objects may be turned into active soft robots. Robotic skins integrate actuation and sensing into a conformable material system, and may be leveraged to create a multitude of controllable soft robots with different functions or gaits to accommodate the demands of different environments. During this talk, I will show our progress towards robust sensors and manufacturing processes that are compatible with the robotic skin framework. I will also show demonstrations of robotic skin prototypes in a wide range of applications – including manipulation tasks, locomotion, and wearables – using the same 2D robotic skins reconfigured on the surface of various 3D soft, inanimate objects.