ERC Starting Grant to redesigning the intelligence of soft robots
Cosimo Della Santina has received an ERC Starting Grant to advance the intelligence of soft robots. His research will focus on having robots interacting with their environment via multiple complex large-area contacts, similar to how an elephant wraps its trunk around a branch.
Traditional robots are rigid and made of hard materials, while soft robots, made from materials such as silicone, are flexible and safe to use. They can perform tasks that are impossible for hard robots. "Think, for example, of a broken car," says Cosimo Della Santina, assistant professor in the Cognitive Robotics department. "A mechanic has to take the car apart to get to the problem. With a squishy soft robot that wriggles through small openings like an octopus, you could fix the car without having to disassemble it."
Learning from nature
The comparison to an octopus is not surprising, as the inspiration for soft robotics comes from nature. Octopuses and elephant trunks, both flexible and boneless, serve as primary examples. Several artificial elephant trunks have already been developed by scientists, including Della Santina, but they haven't really found their way to the market yet. Currently, soft robots are used only for tasks that hard robots can already perform.
Dr. C. (Cosimo) Della Santina
Learning and Autonomous Control
Soft Robotics, Robot Control, Learning for Control, Robotic Hands, Nonlinear Dynamics, Human Motor Control
Increase usability of soft robots
Della Santina views this as a missed opportunity: "Soft robots have many advantages over rigid robots, but we are not utilising their full potential. The current algorithms limit their ability to interact with their environment over a larger surface area." To address this, the intelligence of soft robots needs a complete redesign. This is a huge challenge that Della Santina is eager to tackle. "If successful, we can significantly increase the versatility and usability of soft robots."
The ERC Starting Grant of 1.5 million will enable Della Santina to assemble a team to work on this project. Over the five-year duration of the project, he hopes to develop algorithms and test them on existing soft robots in the lab. The ultimate goal is to combine multiple of these tentacle-like robots into an alien-looking robot that can move autonomously. But for now, that is still science-fiction, Della Santina emphasizes: "First we have to get down to the fundamental work."
European Research Council
The ERC is Europe's leading funding organization for excellent frontier research. The ERC Starting Grants are designed to support outstanding principal investigators at the stage of their careers when they are starting their own independent research team or program. Researchers must demonstrate that their research proposal is groundbreaking, ambitious, and feasible.