Soft Robotics Team, Double Winners at ICRA 2018

This week a team from the ACES University of Wollongong Soft Robotics group headed up to Brisbane to compete in the 2018 International Conference on Robotics and Automation’s (ICRA) “Soft Material Robot Challenge”. We are thrilled to announce the team have come away winners, not in one but in both of the competition’s challenge categories. Congratulations to Professor Gursel Alici, Charbel Tawk and Andrew Gillett!

The Soft Material Robot Challenge invites participants from across the world to demonstrate their robots actuated using soft materials. This challenge provides an international platform to showcase soft robotics research and aims to promote research in the field of soft robotics and applicability to on-field competence. The challenge includes 2 categories: (A) Soft Component Technologies challenge and (B) Soft Robots Grip competition.

For the soft component technology challenge, Charbel delivered a smashing demonstration of his hopping robot called “Gongaroo” and spoke to the application of soft actuation concepts currently being researched as part of his ACES PhD to be awarded equal first in the category. The entries were judged for significance, originality, functionality and quality of documentation and all applicants were required to demonstrate their prototype.

In the gripping challenge, the omnipurpose soft gripper (OPSOG) was put through its paces. The robot carrying the gripper was controlled by one of UOW’s undergraduate students, Andrew Gillett, wirelessly through his PlayStation game controller (IMPRESSIVE!). Under significant pressure Andrew did a fantastic job – successfully picking up, on the first attempt, 10 out of 10 ‘odd’ objects. The objects included a bar of soap, 500 grams of grapes, a USB stick, a pair of scissors, a banana, a pack of tissues and small notebook.

The win is an awesome reward for all the effort that is going into advancing soft robotic (SR) research through the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES). Well done team and keep up the great work!

If you are interested in SR research and want to collaborate with us, send us an email at aces-enquiries@uow.edu.au