Workshop Details
Workshop Details
Workshop Presenters
Workshop Presenters
previous arrow
next arrow
Workshop Details
Workshop III
- Workshop Details
New Approaches in Design, Modeling and Control of Soft Robots
Soft Robots; Interacting with Environment

Dr. Hamed Ghafarirad, Amirkabir University of Technology

Applications of soft pneumatic bending actuators and manipulators in rehabilitation and auxiliary assistant robots and grippers are significantly increasing. Despite many investigations on free motion modeling, understanding how these robots interact with the environment requires more detailed research. It is caused by high compliance and nonlinearity of soft material, which leads to serious challenges in contact conditions. Indeed, conventional Constant Curvature (CC) and Piecewise Constant Curvature (PCC) assumptions will not be more valid. In addition, due to non-uniform deformation, common sensors cannot present the precise information. In this session, we will talk about new compound analytical methods to model the static and dynamic behavior of soft actuators in contact. In addition, alternative approaches for external force estimation and control will be discussed in soft gripping mechanisms.

Soft agro-food Robotics

Dr. Ali Leylavi Shoushtari, Wageningen University & Research

Soft Robotics is a young yet promising field of research aimed to enhanced robots’ safety and adaptability while keeping them simple and affordable. In agro-food robotics, crops are usually delicate, having high variability (i.e. different shape, size, surface texture/roughness and softness) and are affected by environmental conditions e.g. moisture and dust which makes them challenging to handle using conventional rigid robots. The abovementioned features of soft robotics can significantly contribute to the robots’ versatility, making it a perfect solution for the agro-food robotic challenges. To achieve this goal, I try to answer the question of how and to what extent soft robotics can enhance the versatility of robots specially in grasping and manipulation. In particular, I would present two main approaches toward soft versatile robots i.e. engineering-based and bio-inspired design of novel soft robotic components with some research examples. For instance I will present some works on morphing grippers that can passively adapt to the object with complex shapes together with an active adhesive interface for safely handling delicate crops.

TMTDyn Matlab Package for Modelling and Control of Hybrid Rigid-Continuum Robots

Dr. S.M.Hadi Sadati, King's College London, UK

Hybrid rigid–continuum robot design addresses a range of challenges associated with using soft robots in application areas such as robotic surgery. Utilizing such robots poses challenges beyond standard rigid-body robots. A fast, reliable, accurate yet simple dynamic model is important to support the design, analysis, and control of hybrid rigid–continuum robots. In our recent work, we developed a modelling package for hybrid rigid–continuum systems, named TMTDyn. It utilizes four different continuum robot kinematics representations: (i) series rigid-link, (ii) piecewise constant curvature discretization (discretised Cosserat based on relative states), (iii) Finite Element Method (discretised Cosserat based on absolute states), and (iv) reduced-order shape interpolation. TMTDyn features real-time simulation, via optimized C++ models, inverse jacobian, and load compensation formulations for controller and observer designs. TMTDyn benefits from an internal domain-specific language (DSL) using Matlab’s Object-Oriented capabilities and the concept of fluent interfaces to improve validation, understandability, and maintainability of the constructed models. In this presentation, we showcase modelling a variety of continuum robots with TMTDyn such as pneumatically and tendon actuated, concentric tube, and growing robots, following by a discussion on the controller design, language implementation, the benefits, and challenges of building a Matlab-internal DSL.

Multifunctional soft robotic transducers

Dr. Majid Taghavi, Imperial College London

In this talk, I will briefly discuss our inspiration and motivation to develop soft robotics and highlight the demands to deliver a new generation of soft transduction technologies including energy harvesters, sensors, and actuators. I will discuss the current challenges of developing soft transducers, matching the capability of their biological counterparts, and show my approaches to tackle them. I will particularly show how multifunctional transducers generated by the integration of various material, structural and physical functionalities have potential to introduce new smart materials and intelligent structures for real-world soft robotic applications. It will include my research on self-powered sensors, self-sensing actuators, and variable stiffness artificial muscle.

Workshop Presenters
Workshop III
- Workshop Presenters
New Approaches in Design, Modeling and Control of Soft Robots

Dr. Mohammad Zareinejad, Amirkabir University of Technology

Mohammad Zareinejad received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2003, 2005 and 2009, respectively. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, where he also directs the Mechatronics Laboratory. His research interests include soft robotics and fluid power.

Dr. S.M.Hadi Sadati, King's College London, UK

Dr. S.M.Hadi Sadati is a CME Research Fellow at the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, King's College London, UK. He has a Bsc and MSc in mechanical Engineering from Amirkabir (2010) and Sharif (2012) U. T., and a PhD (2018) in Robotics from King’s. He has been a postdoc in Robotics System Engineering at King’s (2019-2021) and in Morphological Computation at the University of Bristol (2017-2019). He was also a Visiting Researcher at LASA, EPFL (2019 & 21), as well as Soft Robotics lab, ETH (2021), the Profs. Walker’s lab, Clemson University (2017), and Dyson School, Imperial College London (2016-2017). His research interests are soft medical robotics, morphological contribution, system dynamics, and mechatronics.

Dr. Majid Taghavi, Imperial College London

Majid Taghavi joined Imperial College London in August 2021 to establish his interdisciplinary research group on Soft Robotic Transducers at the Department of Bioengineering. He aims to deliver the new generation of soft multifunctional actuators, sensors, and energy harvesting technologies, enabling monolithic soft robots for health applications. Prior to this, Majid was a postdoctoral researcher in SoftLab, university of Bristol, where he introduced multiple artificial muscle technologies. Majid was awarded his PhD in BioRobotics from Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna with the highest honor, receiving the Italian Institute of Technology scholarship, where he developed various electromechanical and bioelectrochemical energy harvesting and self-powered sensing technologies. He has a background in Electronics and Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems from K.N.Toosi and Tabriz universities, respectively.

Dr. Ali Leylavi Shoushtari, Wageningen University & Research

I received my PhD in Biorobotics from Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa. During my PhD I designed and developed Bio-inspired inverse kinematic algorithm for anthropomorphic robotic manipulators, and designed and developed a unified motion planning and compliance control framework for upper-arm Neuro-rehabilitation robotic task. Later on I have pursued research on design, fabrication and modeling or soft origami actuators at Center for Micro-BioRobotics (CMBR), IIT as a postdoctoral researcher. In 2019 I joined the Farm Tech Group at Wageningen University & Research and is currently working on soft adhesive grippers for delicate crop handling. The project is in collaboration with the Experimental Zoology Group, and the Group of Physical Chemistry and Soft Matter. My research is mainly focused on how soft robotics can enhance versatility of the agricultural robots. USORO (Universal Soft Robotic Harvester for Intercropping) is an example where we are investigating the potential of soft robots in agro-food.

Dr. Hamed Ghafarirad, Amirkabir University of Technology

Hamed Ghafarirad is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Amirkabir University of Technology since 2015. He received the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2014. His research interests and expertise include mechatronics, robotics, microrobotics and smart materials.

Exit full screenEnter Full screen
previous arrow
previous arrow
next arrow
next arrow
Menu