Soft Robotics: A new approach to bio-inspired robotics（セミナー・シンポジウム）

March 1 (Friday), IS Lecture Room I-3&4, 16:00-17:30

Soft Robotics: A new approach to bio-inspired robotics

Kyujin Cho

Biorobotics Laboratory, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Seoul National Univeristy, Seoul, Korea

Abstract

Soft robotics is an emerging field of research that uses soft or compliant materials and elements to overcome the limitation of traditional robotics. Traditionally, robots have been used in an industrial environment with few unknown parameters. As more and more robots are used to interact with environments that are uncertain and vulnerable to change, a technology that can easily adapt to the changing environment is needed. Soft robotics deals with this issue by using soft and compliant elements in an intelligent way. Bio-inspired robotics is the field of robotics that leads the use of this technology. In this talk, I will give an overview of various soft bio-inspired robotic technologies and some of the robots that are being developed at SNU Biorobotics Laboratory. These soft robotic technologies will be helpful for robots that need to perform in rough or uncertain environments such as military robots and biomedical robots.

Kyu-Jin Cho (M`08) received B.S and M.S. degrees from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea in 1998 and 2000, respectively, and a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007. He was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory until 2008. At present, he is an assistant professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the director of Biorobotics Laboratory at Seoul National University. His research interests include biologically inspired robotics, robotics systems using smart actuators, novel mechanisms using smart structures, and rehabilitation and assistive robotics.

Recent Publications:

Je-Sung Koh and Kyu-Jin Cho, "Omega-shaped Inchworm-inspired Crawling Robot with Large-Index-and-Pitch (LIP) SMA Spring Actuators," IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics, In press.

Sangok Seok, Cagdas Onal, Kyu-Jin Cho, Robert Wood, Daniela Rus, and Sangbae Kim, "Meshworm: A peristaltic soft robot with antagonistic nickel titanium coil actuators," IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics, In press.

Yong-Jai Park, Useok Jeong, Jeongsu Lee, Seok-Ryung Kwon, Ho-Young Kim, and Kyu-Jin Cho, "Kinematic condition for maximizing the thrust of a robotic fish using a compliant caudal fin,"IEEE Transactions on Robotics, In press.

Minkyun Noh, Seung-Won Kim, Sungmin An, Je-Sung Koh, Kyu-Jin Cho, "Flea-inspired catapult mechanism for miniature jumping robots", IEEE Transactions on Robotics, In press.

Sung-Min An, Junghyun Ryu, Maenghyo Cho, and Kyu-Jin Cho, "Engineering design framework for a shape memory alloy coil spring actuator using a static two-state model,"Smart Materials and Structures, vol. 21, 2012.

Sungku Kang, Hyunki In, and Kyu-Jin Cho, "Design of a Passive Brake Mechanism for Tendon Driven Devices", International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing, In press.

H. In, K.-J. Cho, K. Kim and B. Lee, "Jointless Structure and Under-Actuation Mechanism for Compact Hand Exoskeleton",International conference on rehabilitation robotics (ICORR), 2011

Seung-Won Kim, Je-Sung Koh, Maenghyo Cho and Kyu-Jin Cho, "Design & Analysis a Flytrap Robot using Bi-stable Composite", Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation(ICRA), 2011

Seung-Won Kim, Je-Sung Koh, Maenghyo Cho and Kyu-Jin Cho, "Towards a Bio-mimetic Flytrap Robot Based on a Snap-Through Mechanism", Proceedings of the 2010 3rd IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics(BIOROB), pp.534-539, 2010.

Best Student Paper Award

R.J. Wood, K.-J. Cho, and K. Hoffman, "A Novel Multi-Axis Force Sensor for Microrobotics Applications", J. Smart Materials and Structures, 2009.