The following Great Innovative Idea is from Jun Zhang and Michael Yip. Their paper called Three-Dimensional Hysteresis Modeling of Robotic Artificial Muscles with Application to Shape Memory Alloy Actuators was one of the featured talks at the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) sponsored Material Robotics (MaRo) Workshop at the 2017 Robotics Science and Systems (RSS) Conference. The Idea Robotic artificial muscles are actuators that can make robots move. Unlike electric motors, robotic artificial muscles are compliant and can generate straight contractions just like our biological muscles. Recently, they are increasingly popular in many exciting areas, such as biomimetic robots, soft robots, and safe human-robot interaction. To practically use robotic artificial muscles, it is crucial to have an accurate model […]

Contributions to this post were made by Yigit Menguc from Oregon State University. The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently sponsored a workshop at the 2017 Robotics Science and Systems Conference called Material Robotics (MaRo). The goal of the workshop was to bring together researchers in robotics and materials science to learn from each other and identify the research challenges and applications of robotic materials. The original vision of a “robot” introduced by playwright Karel Čapek in 1920 was that of an autonomous machine molded in the image of humans. Interestingly, the play begins with a discussion of the materials that make up the robots and introduces the techniques used to […]