SRT Competition 2023 Winners Announced!

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Competition 2023

We are excited to announce the winners of the 2023 Soft Robotic Design Competition!

The SRT Competition returned in 2023 with 35 interested applicants competing across three different categories (Open, College, and High School) and with participants from around the world. The mission of the competition is to showcase and promote the next generation of Soft Robotic Technology. We did just that with a high variety of projects submitted. The winner of the Open Category was a Torsional Soft Gripper called ROSE from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) which has promised to revolutionize the agriculture industry and related fields! Additional winners from all of the categories included a soft origami robot, a soft robotic hand, an assistive cooking device, as well as a novel soft prosthetic device. We're very excited to see new ideas continue to be developed and for the field to continually grow.

Join the community: sign up for the Soft Robotics Toolkit mailing list to get regular updates about upcoming events!

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What is the soft robotics toolkit?

The Soft Robotics Toolkit is a collection of shared resources to support the design, fabrication, modeling, characterization, and control of soft robotic devices. The Toolkit was developed as part of educational research being undertaken in the Harvard Biodesign Lab. The ultimate aim of the Toolkit is to advance the field of soft robotics by allowing designers and researchers to build upon each other’s work, and to provide educational resources that inspire and inform the next generation of soft roboticists. The Toolkit includes detailed design documentation describing a wide range of soft robotic components (including actuators, sensors, controls and manufacturing methods), and related files that can be downloaded and used in the design, manufacture, and operation of soft robots. In combination with low material costs and increasingly accessible rapid prototyping technologies such as 3D printers, laser cutters, and CNC mills, the Toolkit enables soft robotic components to be produced easily and affordably.

Each section of the site focuses on a soft robotic device or sub-component, and includes the following:

  1. Design: A description of the device and how it works, with related design files that can be downloaded and guidelines on potential modifications you could make to the design.
  2. Fabrication: A bill of materials listing all of the parts, materials, and equipment you will need to build your own device, plus a detailed set of instructions for you to follow.
  3. Modeling: A discussion of modeling and analysis approaches you can use to predict and understand the behavior of the device and optimize your design.
  4. Testing: In order to validate your models and better understand your device, you will need to carry out empirical tests. This section describes the tests that other designers and researchers have carried out and that may provide inspiration for the design of your own experiments.
  5. Case Studies: Examples of how others have used the device or component for real-world applications.
  6. Downloads: All of the files related to the design, fabrication, modeling, testing, and control of the device.

The content on this site is drawn from projects carried out in a number of research labs. Our aim is to improve and expand the toolkit by welcoming feedback and contributions from the soft robotics community. To read more about the development of the Soft Robotics Toolkit please read some of our publications, detailing the research behind this resource. If you have an interest in advancing the field and engaging with this community, please contact us!

 

After a long time doing some background work, bringing on new people, and a temporary hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the SRT is active again! We are planning on bringing you some new and exciting new opportunities to learn and enage with the broader SRT community. Check back here soon for more information...

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Also feel free to post your questions or comments on our Google Groups Forum if there is a relevant topic you wish to discuss with the community.

 

In the press (Read more press publications here)

 

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Some of the information contained in this web site includes intellectual property covered by both issued and pending patent applications. It is intended solely for research, educational and scholarly purposes by not-for-profit research organizations.
If you have interest in specific technologies for commercial applications, please contact us here.