UK-Japan Workshop on Bio-Inspired Soft Robotics

The field of Soft Robotics has been one of the most attractive research areas that is expected to provide significant breakthroughs in robotics. Unlike the conventional robotic systems that make use of rigid mechanics and inflexible control architectures, the investigations in Soft Robotics focus on the use of soft and deformable materials for rapid and dexterous behavior generation as well as robust and precise sensing in robotic systems. With the forthcoming achievement of Soft Robotics, it is expected to considerably broaden the application niche of robotics, including uncertain hazardous environment and human-oriented task space, where the conventional robotic systems could not be used very well so far. Toward high impact applications, the goal of this workshop is to bring together the leading scientists of this exciting research area in UK and Japan, and to discuss strategic research collaborations in the future. More specifically, in this workshop, we first assess the previous collaboration projects between UK and Japan, and second, to discuss how we structure the research directions for fruitful collaborations in the future.
For this purpose, we have obtained the basic funding from Japan Society of Promotion of Science (JSPS) to invite five leading researchers from Japan, and this proposal is supposed to be a match funding to support attendees from the UK universities, including both established researchers as well as future promising senior students who will play major roles in the ongoing and future bilateral collaborations.
As the main outcome of this event we expect:
- A mutual understanding of the state-of-the-art of both countries, exploration of research possibilities and actions to address the gaps.
- Discussion and agreement on major actions to shape the future of the field, and report the outcome of this workshop as a special issue at a major technical journal
- Develop a scientific network of these researchers to foster further collaborations and research exchanges as a working group.
- Develop joint interdisciplinary and international research grant proposals (both in UK, European, and Japan)
- Promote the exchange of young researchers (Master, PhD students and postdocs) exchange between institutions, strengthening not only their academic capabilities but also increasing their awareness of different cultures.

More than 10 million people in the UK are aged over 65 and that number is predicted to nearly double in the next 30 years. In the aging society, robotics technologies are expected to play a key role to bring innovations for the challenges. The expected lack of labor forces as well as the needs of elderly care will be particularly the sectors where robotics technologies, such as automation of production processes and wearable, assistive and medical devices, will provide significant contributions to sustain our society in the next decades. In this context, soft robotics will be one of the most important technology providers, because soft robots can flexibly, intelligently and safely interact with human users while keeping the systems affordable. Considering the societal context of this research area, this workshop plans a set of effective actions for the systematic development of this important research area.
- Activities toward academic collaborations: Academic outreach activities in soft robotics research are particularly important because of its interdisciplinary nature of the field. There is no simple way to make significant progress without interdisciplinary collaborations between robotics, material science, control engineering, and computer science. To foster cross-disciplinary collaborations, (i) we write and publish a report outlining the outcome of the discussion in this workshop, (ii) we organize a special issue on the topics of soft robotics research in a major journal, and (iii) we develop a joint research grant proposals for the international and national funding schemes.
- Impact through education and public outreach: Another crucial outreach activity of this workshop is education of soft robotics technologies to younger engineers as well as general public. There is an urgent need of engineers in the next generations who can make use of the newly developed technologies, and it is also necessary for a broader scope of people to know more about the unconventional robotics technologies that can change our lives in the near future. From this perspective, (i) we invite senior students and postdocs to the workshop who could be the main drivers of progressing the research in this field, (ii) we develop strategic ideas to promote education through the future grant proposals and research programs, (iii) we coordinate with the existing national and international robotics education programs such as UK-RAS Network and the other European training networks.
- Activities toward industrial impact: This project also explores the pathway of impact toward practical industrial applications. Compared to the conventional rigid/hard manipulators, the soft manipulator technology we investigate in this project will provide a few distinguished unique selling points: (i) affordable economic cost for variations of manipulation tasks, (ii) flexible manipulability of uncertain and unstructured objects, and (iii) intrinsic safety in human co-existing environments. Therefore there should be considerable demand of the technologies we discuss in this workshop, especially in the context of innovative manufacturing, robotic co-workers, and other soft robotics applications in the context of wearable, rehabilitation and medical industry. These possibilities will be explored together with the technology transfer experts during the workshop.