151-0636-00L Soft and Biohybrid Robotics
| Semester | Spring Semester 2022 |
| Lecturers | R. Katzschmann |
| Periodicity | yearly recurring course |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Abstract | Soft and biohybrid robots are emerging fields taking inspiration from Nature to create integrated robots that are inherently safer to interact with. You will be able to create the structures, actuators, sensors, models, controllers, and machine learning architectures exploiting the deformable nature of these robots. You will apply the learned principles to challenges of your research domain. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | Learning Objective 1: Convert any robotics challenge into a functional soft robotic physical prototype Step 1: Formulate suitable functional requirements Step 2: Select actuator material Step 3: Design + fabricate suitable for the task Step 4: Controller for basic functionality Step 5: Learning Approach for complex robotic skills Learning Objective 2: Formulate control and learning frameworks to highly articulated robots in real life scenarios Step 1: Formulate the dynamic skills needed for the real life scenario Step 2: Pick or combine suitable control and learning frameworks given the robot at hand Step 3: Evaluate the control approach for a real life scenario Step 4: Modify and enhance the control approach and repeat the evaluation Learning Objective 3: Apply the principle of mechanical impedance and embodied intelligence to any research challenge within any domain Step 1: Identify the moving aspects of the problem Step 2: Choose and design the passive and actively-controlled degrees of freedom Step 3: Pick the actuation material based on suitability to your challenge Step 4: Design in detail multiple combinations of body and brain Step 5: Simulate, build, test, fail, and repeat this often and quickly until the soft robot works for simple settings Step 6: Upgrade and validate the robot for performances in real world conditions Learning Objective 4: Rethink approaches to robotics by moving towards designs made of living materials Step 1: Identify what problems could be easier to solve with a complex living material Step 2: Scout for available works that have potentially tackled the problem with a living material Step 3: Formulate a hypothesis for your new approach with a living material Step 4: Design a minimum viable prototype (MVP) that properly highlights your new approach | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | Students will cover a range of latest research insights on materials, fabrication technologies, and modeling approaches to design, simulate, and build soft and biohybrid robots. Part 1: Functional and intelligent materials for use in soft and biohybrid robotic applications Part 2: Design and design morphologies of soft robotic actuators and sensors Part 3: Fabrication techniques including 3D printing, casting, roll-to-roll, tissue engineering Part 4: Biohybrid robotics including microrobots and macrorobots; tissue engineering Part 5: Mechanical modeling including minimal parameter models, finite-element models and ML-based models Part 6: Closed-loop controllers of soft robots that exploit the robot's impedance and dynamics for locomotion and manipulation tasks Part 7: Machine Learning approaches to soft robotics, for design synthesis, modeling, and control A mandatory semester-long project will teach the participants to implement the skills and knowledge learned during the class by building their own soft robotic prototype or simulation. There is a mandatory pass/fail assignment to be submitted within the first two weeks of class to get a spot in the project. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lecture notes | All class materials including slides, recordings, class challenges infos, pre-reads, and tutorial summaries can be found on Moodle: https://moodle-app2.let.ethz.ch/course/view.php?id=14501 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literature | 1) Wang, Liyu, Surya G. Nurzaman, and Fumiya Iida. "Soft-material robotics." (2017). 2) Polygerinos, Panagiotis, et al. "Soft robotics: Review of fluid‐driven intrinsically soft devices; manufacturing, sensing, control, and applications in human‐robot interaction." Advanced Engineering Materials 19.12 (2017): 1700016. 3) Verl, Alexander, et al. Soft Robotics. Berlin, Germany:: Springer, 2015. 4) Cianchetti, Matteo, et al. "Biomedical applications of soft robotics." Nature Reviews Materials 3.6 (2018): 143-153. 5) Ricotti, Leonardo, et al. "Biohybrid actuators for robotics: A review of devices actuated by living cells." Science Robotics 2.12 (2017). 6) Sun, Lingyu, et al. "Biohybrid robotics with living cell actuation." Chemical Society Reviews 49.12 (2020): 4043-4069. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prerequisites / Notice | dynamics, controls, intro to robotics Only for students at master or PhD level. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Competencies |
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