Soft Architected Robots—Printing Complex Forms for New Sensorimotor Functions in Robotics

Recent advances in soft robotics motivate the design of multifunctional composites for distributed actuation and perception capabilities. These functionalities are required for addressing long-standing challenges in soft robot control and achieving more sophisticated sensorimotor behaviors. However, continued progress towards this vision is stymied not only by limitations in current materials and manufacturing methods, but also in how to strategically integrate soft and rigid materials in robot bodies. With these challenges in mind, I will present approaches for designing and 3D printing electrically-driven soft robots from architected materials. First, I will introduce a flexible, architected soft actuator unit for motorized extensional motion. I will introduce techniques for sensorizing these architected actuators and assembling them for locomoting soft robots. Finally, I will discuss new strategies for architecting soft ionic conductors for distributed sensing. These efforts aim to embody both physical and computational intelligence into real-world-deployable soft robots with practical task-capabilities.