The International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft) is perceived as one of the leading conferences in the field of innovative robots. This year's conference, which took place from 23 to 26 April in Lausanne/Switzerland, was entitled ‘Interdisciplinarity and Widening Horizons’.
livMatS supported the conference as an official partner and brought together international researchers from the fields of philosophy and robotics in a workshop on “Bioinspired Autonomy: Philosophical Aspects Meet Technological Challenges”. Jun.-Prof. Edoardo Milana organized this workshop together with Prof. Marco Tamborini (Technical University of Darmstadt) and Prof. Johannes (Bas) Overvelde (Eindhoven University of Technology).
livMatS Group Leader Dr. Isabella Fiorello co-organized another workshop on the topic of “Nature-Inspired Intelligence: Biomimetic and Hybrid Materials for autonomous Soft Machines”.
Embodied intelligence and energy autonomy
“Our workshop was a great success, with many conference delegates attending it. The discussions between engineers and philosophers were exciting and lively”, says Edoardo Milana.
The workshop explored questions around embodied intelligence and energy autonomy in soft robots. Scientists discussed aspects such as how the embodied approach will change general thinking about machine intelligence as well as ethical and practical boundaries in the design process.
Impressive advances in AI models require advanced hardware capabilities
“Machines can now solve puzzles, find patterns and write texts much faster and sometimes better than the large majority of humans, but they struggle to operate in the real world; any unpredicted interaction may cause robots to get stuck or fall, without mentioning the limited amount of energy autonomy they have at disposal”, says Milana. “Bioinspired autonomy in engineered systems is therefore out of reach if the impressive progresses in AI models are unmatched by advanced hardware capabilities, with new materials and architectures at the mechanical and electrical level, freeing also computional power for high-level AI reasoning. That was something we made clear at the workshop.”
Complexity lies in simplicity
The workshop co-organized by Isabella Fiorello focused on the most recent strategies from nature to design new materials, derive biomimetic structures, and develop more capable soft robots.
“Nature’s secret to complexity often lies in simplicity, achieved through intelligent materials,” says Isabella Fiorello. “Our workshop explored how soft robots can mimic these strategies to achieve physical intelligence, sustainability, and energy autonomy – three frontiers we believe are crucial for the future of bioinspired robotics.”
The workshop “Bioinspired Autonomy: Philosophical Aspects Meet Technological Challenges” opened with a keynote speech by Prof. Thomas Speck. The keynote was followed by interactive Q&A sessions and flash presentations by the philosophers Prof. Marta Halina (University of Cambridge, UK), Prof. Edoardo Datteri (University of Milano Bicocca, Italy), Dr. Louisa Estadieau (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) and the engineers Prof. Cosimo Della Santina (TU Delft, Netherlands), Dr. Isabella Fiorello (livMatS, University of Freiburg, Germany), Prof. Benjamin Gorissen (KU Leuven, Belgium) and Prof. Josie Hughes (EPFL, Switzerland).
The workshop “Nature-Inspired Intelligence: Biomimetic and Hybrid Materials for autonomous Soft Machines” featured talks by Prof. Esther Amstad (EFPL, Switzerland), Prof. Saravana Prashanth Murali Babu (University of Denmark, Denmark), Prof. Linnea Hesse (University of Hamburg, Germany), Prof. Bilge Baytekin (Bilgent University, Turkey), Prof. Aniket Pal (University of Stuttgart, Germany)