Over the last twenty years, progress in soft robotics has motivated the materialization of physical intelligence through new forms of soft actuators, sensors, and control strategies. But the challenges of power, performance, and control in soft robotics remain limited by available materials. The natural world is inspiring a new generation of materials design paradigms, where multifunctionality not only tightly integrates multiple robotic capabilities, but enables truly autonomous behaviors. The next-generation of autonomous agents should be indistinguishable from materials, as they must truly integrate distributed actuation, perception, control, and energy capabilities. To enable this interdisciplinary vision, this symposium aims to bring several communities together – from materials science and soft robotics to chemistry and mechanics – to build beyond visions of robotic materials to truly autonomous ones.

Our symposium is structured around three core tracks. The first – robotic materials – will feature new materials for actuators, sensors, controllers, and energy. Research themes of interest are electrically-driven and chemically powered actuators, new soft material sensing and control strategies, and materials for robotic power. The second track – design and fabrication – will highlight innovations in multifunctional material fabrication, directed assembly of materials across multiple lengths scales, and modeling. The third track – autonomous materials – will explore the emergence of autonomous, self-regulatory, and intelligence in material systems, while exploring emerging areas of embodied energy, and distributed sensorimotor capabilities. Overall, the three tracks will collectively explore new applications for robotic or autonomous materials, including devices for wearables and biomedicine, untethered bioinspired robots, food security, environmental monitoring, and beyond.

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