Nature has given us a number of inspirations to improve our technologies over centuries, and the field of bio-inspired engineering is becoming even more important now as the technologies and human societies are more complex and rapidly progressing. In the context of robotics technologies, we are currently facing a considerable paradigm shift from rigid robots to soft ones, inspired from biological systems. The fact that animals’ bodies consist of soft materials (such as tissues, skins, and muscles) was found to be essential in order for them to be adaptive and functional in complex environments, and by making our robots soft, they will be more flexible, more intelligent, safer, and more affordable. With the soft technologies, we are able to make our robots more “inclusive” in human-oriented environment (unlike the conventional rigid robots that are not able to collaboratively interact with human users), which is one of the utmost urgent societal requirements especially in the rapidly growing aging societies (e.g. for elderly care or co-working factories).
The UK-Japan Seminar on Bio-Inspired Soft Robotics will bring together the leading scientists of this exciting and important research area to discuss the actions to be taken in the coming years. Even though UK and Japan are known to be two of the world leaders in this research area, there have not been explicit interactions and collaborations made in the past. Through this seminar, we will develop a shared vision among the top researchers, which is then be broken down to a set of concrete follow-up actions such as a joint special issue in the major scientific journal, exchanges of students/researchers, joint grant proposals, and future workshops and conferences
Location
Sidney Sussex College,
University of Cambridge