3D/4D Printing and Smart Materials for Sustainable Soft Robotics

Abstract:

Scientists have been seeking for more sustainable and green technology to mitigate the adverse impact on environment and human society. Along with the development of soft robotics field, more and more new sustainable, soft and smart materials have been developed and have been used for fabricating various kinds of soft robots. At the same time, 3D printing technology has been experiencing an extraordinary boom and has been utilized in many fields across industry and education. 3D printing has also been investigated intensively by researchers in the field of soft robotics for fast prototyping soft and complex structures and mechanisms. 4D printing technology, as a relatively new concept proposed almost a decade ago, targets on printing smart materials which can spontaneously generate deformation or change physical properties after printing. The combination of smart material and 3D/4D printing technologies is opening new opportunities for developing novel soft robots and interesting applications. This workshop aims at bringing together distinguish researchers from different research fields including material science, 3D/4D printing, and soft robotics to identify, discuss, and explore the opportunities and potentials in using smart materials and 3D/4D printing for soft robotics applications. Topics will cover broadly smart materials, fabrication, theoretical modeling, simulation, and applications of sustainable soft robotics. In addition, we will showcase a hydrogel 3D printer which will be brought to the workshop and demonstration will be conducted during the workshop.

Time: 9:00-13:10, Oct. 14, 2024

Location: Room 12, Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC)

Invited Speakers

Hidemitsu Furukawa
Yamagata Univ.,
**Japan**

Program

Time	Speaker	Title
9:00 – 9:10	Organizer	Opening and introduction
9:10 – 9:30	Hidemitsu Furukawa	3D/4D gel printing system as a co-creation platform
9:30 – 9:50	Ali Zolfagharian	A journey through time: soft actuators and 4D printing
9:50 – 10:10	Liang Yue	Grayscale Digital Light Processing for Multi-Material 3D Printing and Shape Morphing 4D printing
10:10 – 10:30	Poster spotlight teaser session	1. Zaiyang Liu, “SFEM-4DP: A Strain-based Finite Element Model for 4D Printing” 2. Khalid Meitani, “3D Printing of High-Fidelity Monolithic Soft Robotic Grippers Using Highly Flexible TPU” 3. Zhe Qiu, “A 4D Printed Hydrogel Driven Soft Gripper” and “Introduction of gel 3D printer”
10:30 – 11:00	Coffee break and poster session	Coffee break and poster session
11:00 – 11:20	Lijie Grace Zhang	4D printing multi-responsive smart structures for biomedical applications
11:20 – 11:40	Jinhwan Yoon	Direct ink writing of soft materials for deformable optoelectronics
11:40 – 12:00	Jonathan Rossiter	Printing reactive gels and environmental robots
12:00 – 12:20	Huichan Zhao	Empowering soft robots with high-power-density artificial muscles and multimodal sensors
12:20 – 12:40	Yoshikatsu Hayashi	Resonance, entrainment, and memory in self-oscillating hydrogels
12:40 – 13:00	Li Zhang	Magnetic miniature robots with programming of ferromagnetic soft materials
13:00 – 13:10	Organizer	Closing remark

Call for Contributions

We call for posters to be presented on the workshop. Authors should submit an extended abstract (max 2 pages) as a PDF in the standard IEEE conference format before the submission deadline of Sept. 1st, 2024. The PDF should be sent to qiuzhe@fc.ritsumei.ac.jp and the email subject should be “[IROS 2024 Workshop] abstract submission“. The accepted abstracts will be invited to join the poster session at the workshop. Before the workshop, these authors are required to submit a one-page slide to the organizer. They will have 2-3 minutes to briefly introduce their work in poster spotlight teaser session and show their posters during the coffee break.

One “Best Poster Award” and two “Best Poster Runner-Up Award” will be granted based on the evaluations by the invited speakers and audience. The content of the posters can have chances to be summarized and published in potential journals such as Advanced Robotics etc.

Topics of Interest: