Fibrous materials and textiles for soft robotics

Abstract

Soft, mechanically compliant robots are developed to safely interact with a “human environment”. The use of textiles and fibrous (composite-) materials for the fabrication of robots opens up new possibilities for “Softness/Compliance” and safety in human-robot interaction. Besides external motion monitoring systems, textiles allow on-board monitoring and early prediction, or detection, of robot-human contact. The use of soft fibers and textiles for robot skins can increase the acceptance of robots in human surroundings. Novel topology optimization tools, materials, processing technologies and biomimetic engineering allow developing ultra-light-weight, multifunctional, and adaptive structures.