RISING STARS

Assistant Professors and Group Leaders

• Prof. Kaitlyn Becker, MIT, USA
• Prof. Siyi Xu, UIUC, USA
• Prof. Amy Han, SNU, Korea

Postdoctoral Researchers

• Dr. Myungsun Park, UCSD, USA
• Dr. Robert Baines, ETH, Switzerland
• Dr. Carmelo Sferrazza, UC Berkeley, USA
• Dr. Taekyoung Kim, Northwestern, USA
• Dr. Pham Huy Nguyen, EMPA and Imperial, Switzerland
• Dr. Monica Li, Yale, USA
• Dr. Falk Tauber, Uni Freiburg, Germany

PhD Students

• Stephanie Woodman, Yale, USA
• Maximilian Stölzle, TU Delft, Netherlands
• Joshua Davy, University Leeds, UK
• Marquise Bell, Rice University, USA
• Aiste Balciunaite, ETH, Switzerland

AWARD FINALISTS

Best paper award:

• He et al. “A decapod robot with rotary bellows-enclosed soft transmissions”
• Ouyoucef et al. “Modeling, analysis and design of an extensible planar parallel tendon actuated continuum robot”
• Park et al. “Nano Crack-based Angular Potentiometers for Deployable and Small-scale Origami Robots”
• Benli et al. “Pneumatically Actuated Morphing Manipulator Employing Shape Memory Polymer-based External Auxetic Structure”
• Mortensen et al. “Tensegrity-based Robot Leg Design with Variable Stiffness”

Best student paper award:

• Shankar Narayanan et al. “Adaptive Self-sealing Soft Robotic Face Mask (SRFM) with Particle Jamming”
• Bu et al. “Release Chamber Enables Suction Cup to Delaminate and Harvest Fluid”
• Shen et al. “Controlling Pneumatic Soft Bending Actuator with Online Learning Pneumatic Physical Reservoir Computing”
• Kumar Thanigaivel et al. “Design and Fabrication Workflow for Vertebrate Soft Robots”
• Feng et al. “WHERE-Bot: a Wheel-less Helical-ring Everting Robot Capable of Omnidirectional Locomotion”

Best extended abstract award:

• Schomaker and Overvelde “Echinoderm-like autonomy for soft robots.”
• Lampinen et al. “Soft Micropneumatic Touchpad”
• Im et al. “Reinforcement Learning-Driven Wing-Strain-Based Control for Flapping-Wing Drones”
• Duriez et al. “New reconfigurable parallel continuum platform for sharing, teaching and hands-on activities on soft robotics”
• Farhadi et al. “Single-vertex Origami for Multimodal Crawling Locomotion”

PAPERS IN THE SPOTLIGHT

These contributions received excellent reviews and ranked highly but were not selected for an award nomination.

• Zhang et al. “Octopus-Swimming-Like Robot with Soft Asymmetric Arms”
• Bedenik et al. “Bistable SMA-driven engine for pulse-jet locomotion in soft aquatic robots”
• Ormazabal et al. “Measuring Morphological Computation in Turtle-Inspired Multi-Modal Robotic Locomotion”
• Li et al. “Octopus-Inspired Hydrostatic Artificial Muscle with Variable Stiffness”
• Kim et al. “A Swinging, Variable-Length Soft Tail from 3D Printed Origami: Steps Toward Bioinspired Robot Walking”
• Zhang et al. “SpikingSoft: A Spiking Neuron Controller for Bio-inspired Locomotion with Soft Snake Robots”
• Nguyen et al. “A Sustainable Development Framework for Soft Pneumatic Actuators that are: Biodegradable, Self-healable and Re-programmable”
• Ochoa et al. “Metamaterial-Reinforced Origami Soft Actuators: Reconfigurable Stiffness and Deformation”
• Kaarthik et al. “Miniaturized and Motorized: Fast, Soft Architected Robotic Actuators via Molded Thermoplastic Elastomers”
• Trumpler et al. “Low-Cost 3D printed, Biocompatible Ionic Polymer Membranes for Soft Actuators”
• Hsiao et al. “Hovering Flight of Soft-Actuated Insect-Scale Micro Aerial Vehicles using Deep Reinforcement Learning”
• Bal et al. “Parametric curve-based State-Space Representation for Shape Control of Soft-Continuum Manipulators”
• Goury et al. “Towards Real-Time Simulation of Soft Robots with Contacts using a Method of Hybrid Hyper-Reduction”
• Li et al. “Autonomous Burrowing and Retrieval of Soft Robotic Anchors in Granular Media”
• Li et al. “Variable stiffness and variable size particles for reconfigurable granular metamaterials”
• Wu et al. “Electrostatically Induced Multi-directional Vibro-impact Motions”
• Geissenberger et al. “Sensorizing High Aspect Ratio Soft Robots: Towards Closed-Loop Applications for Grasping and Locomotion”
• Lo Preti et al. “The HexSOWS: a Modular Soft and Robust Skin Concept for Multimodal Tactile Sensing”
• Chun et al. “Strain in Sound: Soft Corrugated Tube for Local Strain Sensing with Acoustic Resonance”
• Imanian et al. “Design and 3D Printing of Soft Bending Sensors with TPMS Structures”
• Capp et al. “Soft and Highly-Integrated Optical Fiber Bending Sensors for Proprioception in Multi-Material 3D Printed Fingers”
• Song et al. “SODA – Soft Origami Dynamic Utensil for Assisted Feeding”
• Koszowska et al. “A Pneumatic Anchoring Mechanism for Improved Stability in Soft Magnetic Manipulators for Surgery”
• Khalid et al. “3D-Printed Variable-Length Magnetically Steered Catheter Tip for Enhanced Access in Aneurysm Interventions”
• Xu et al. “Geometric-Aware Attention Networks with Adaptive Constraint Adjustment for Static Modeling of Continuum Robots”
• Grassmann et al. “Clarke Transform and Encoder-Decoder Architecture for Arbitrary Joints Locations in Displacement-Actuated Continuum Robots”
• Patterson et al. “Design of Trimmed Helicoid Soft-Rigid Hybrid Robots”
• Greenland et al. “SoGraB: A Visual Method for Soft Grasping Benchmarking and Evaluation”
• Allison et al. “Structured Pneumatic Fingerpads for Actively Tunable Grip Friction”
• Lavarias et al. “HaptOGrasp: A Soft Haptic Origami Grasper for Rendering Grip Force Feedback”
• Ingle et al. “Soft Manipulation Surface With Reduced Actuator Density For Heterogeneous Object Manipulation”
• Carlet et al. “Behaviour Range Optimization of the Dexterous Robotic Open Parametric Hand”