Announcing the winners of the third annual Soft Robotics Design and Research Competitions!

The Soft Robotics Toolkit design and research competitions are an annual event aimed at engaging and growing the soft robotics research community. To date, 500+ participants from over 250 teams competed for prizes, submitting a detailed account of the design, fabrication, modeling and testing of the component or system they create using an online wiki platform. The best projects, featuring the most detailed design documentation and new research ideas are added to the site as permanent features to the Toolkit. Submissions at every level of the competition add value to the Toolkit content as a resource for other students and researchers to build upon. Submissions for this year included foam-based actuators, 3D printed embedded circuits molded within a soft robotic hand, and even edible actuators! Our judges, professionals and researchers within their field, reviewed the entries and after much deliberation have made their final decision in each category aimed at researchers, students, and hobbyists.

The first, the prize for the research category, required a significant contribution to the field of soft robotics and went to Organic Robotics Lab at Cornell for their submission of Foam-based Actuators. These actuators are made by combining open celled foam for the actuator’s unique structures and a non-porous elastomer layer to seal the open cell foam and complete the pneumatic actuator. This creates an air-tight network of channels within the porous foam. The open celled foam allowed the actuators to hold their shape when molded vertically and even when shaped into various layered actuator configurations.

Sort The prize for research runner ups both took 3D printing technology to new heights exemplified by the unique structures of their robots submitted as well in the fabrication process utilizing 3D printing to create more complex actuator molds. The HPN Manipulator from the Multi-Agent System Lab, University of Science and Technology of China incorporates a pneumatic network of pillow-like actuators and a 3D printed honey-comb like structure for strength to create a manipulator arm. This arm is able to grasp a variety of objects because of its dexterity and multiple degrees of freedom. This allows the arm to move it in sections to create an even more nimble manipulator. Sort The college-level category, open to university students as well as soft robotic hobbyists, saw submissions ranging from rolling robots inspired by Star Wars all the way to novel approaches to embedding soft circuits. This was showcased by the winner’s submission, 3D Printed Embedded Soft Circuits from MIT SAMs Lab and Korea University. Using the mold of a hand, this project co-molded a circuit for an LED array that was able to be used in tandem with the pneumatic network to not only light up but also actuate the fingers of the robot. The circuit was printed using conductive material filament and allowed the LED circuits to be individually printed within each of the hand’s fingers.Sort

The category of High School Design Competition, now in its second year as a category, saw impressive projects from high school students from around the world. The winner, submitted by students from the Haverford School in Pennsylvania, created Edible Soft Actuators. As soft robots work more closely and in tandem with humans these students imagined a future where soft robots could be eaten, in the case of medical devices or as toys to excite and inform other young students about the field. Testing and creating the perfect formula of gelatin and corn syrup the Haverford students went on to file a patent for their perfected formula. The high school runner-up, a student from Cheonan Jungang High School in South Korea, developed a wireless arm band to measure movement within the tendons of the arm and potentially control a prosthetic hand if the tendons are still intact.

To read more about the competition and about the details of each project, please visit the 2017 competition page.

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