Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Invited talk
Description
Soft Robotics and electroactive polymer
Soft robotics is the rapidly emerging field of research that encompasses and exploits active and passive soft materials, stiffness control and controllable compliance to realise completely soft and active machines and systems. It impinges on future robotics, engineering systems, medical devices, consumer devices and many more sectors. It includes not only smart materials, such as electroactive polymers (EAPs), but also compliant and active mechanics and smart structures. Here we present current and future soft robotics and discuss how EAPs, and other smart technologies, can help to realise the full potential of soft robotics and active compliance. This will include artificial muscle actuators, multi-stable devices, binary robotics and smart skins. We will also introduce the RoboSoft FP7 coordination action in soft robotics.