10th USIAS Fellows Seminar - Soft Robotics

Matteo Mauro, Fellow 2013, Institute of Supramolecular Science and Engineering

Soft robotics is currently an emerging research field, due to the great potential application in surgery devices, mimicking skeleton-free organisms, artificial muscles, electro- and photo-active actuators, just to cite some examples. By means of actuators, one of the main advantages of “soft” compared to the “hard” robotics is that the former are much easier to adapt and are better at performing difficult movements or handling delicate objects. In order to achieve for example real-use artificial muscles, soft and highly anisotropically ordered materials are of fundamental importance.

Matteo Mauro is currently working on a project to develop supramolecular functional materials in which deformation and motion would be contoled via external stimuli such as light. During the seminar, Dr. Mauro will give an insight into the research he is conducting in the field in collaboration with Stéphane Bellemin-Laponnaz.