Emerging applications in Soft Robotics (TU/e)
- Lead Researcher: TBD
This postdoc will enhance the cooperation between the academic partners involved in the Soft Robotics 4TU program via application of developed design techniques to the emerging use cases from the following areas: modern manufacturing systems, health care, soft (cooperative) robots for agriculture.
Agro-robotics and computation solid mechanics (WUR)
- Lead Researcher: Ali Leylavi Shoushtari
In the agri-food domain, fast and effective manipulation of very delicate products is a key issue that has not received much attention yet. This post-doc will design flexible gripping of soft materials, considering natural variability in food product shape and size, and will be a linking pin between the challenging real-life application and the fundamental bio-inspired concepts developed by the other WU post-doc and tenure track.
The project is within Agricultural Green Development (AGD) aimed to design and develop an autonomous robotic harvester for intercropping.
Soft Surgical Robots (TUD)
Cuttlefish-inspired Medical Instruments
- Lead Researcher: Aimée Sakes
In order to design and manufacture soft tube-like robotic limb structures for medical applications, this tenure tracker will realise in-body actuation by means of artificial microactuators and artificial muscles, using cuttlefish-inspired structures. Novel non-assembly 3D printing will be explored to integrate electronics, embedded micro-actuators and artificial muscles, in layered combinations of parallel and helical structures. Additionally, he/she will research spiral-like bio-inspired power cable structures that can withstand extreme stretch due to their shape. In close collaboration with the tenure tracker & postdoc WU, this tenure tracker will combine bio-to-techno transfer with techno-to-bio transfer, whereby knowledge of biological functionality is gained from building the soft robot limbs.
Soft Care and Rehabilitation Robots (UT)
- Lead Researcher: Ali Sadeghi
This tenure tracker will focus on the design and control of soft robots for care and rehabilitation, using additive manufacturing techniques in close collaboration with the bio-inspiration and human-robot interaction tenure trackers Additive manufacturing inherently incorporates anisotropic materials, reflected in ditto electrical, mechanical, thermal, etc. properties, requiring material science approaches to understand and describe the materials. A variety of printing methods is available, each with its own merits, but with the requirement to enable multi-material printing. The resulting printed objects will clearly be marked by the chosen method, design and printing strategy, determining resolution, accuracy, available material choices, robustness, lifetime, etc.