Frontiers in Robotics and AI (Sep 2016)
Contest-driven soft-robotics boost: the RoboSoft Grand Challenge
Abstract
This paper reports the design process, the implementation and the results of a novel roboticcontest addressing soft robots, named RoboSoft Grand Challenge. Application-oriented taskswere proposed in three different scenarios where soft robotics is particularly lively: manipulation,terrestrial and underwater locomotion. Starting from about sixty expressions of interest submittedby international teams distributed across the world, nineteen robots were eventually selectedto participate in the challenge in two of the initially proposed scenarios, i.e. manipulation andterrestrial locomotion. Results highlight both the effectiveness and limitations of state of the artsoft robots with respect to the selected tasks. The paper will also focus on some of the advantagesand disadvantages of contests as technology-steering mechanisms, including what we calledreductionist design, a phenomenon in which simplistic solutions are devised to purposely tacklethe proposed tasks, possibly hindering more general and desired technological advancements.
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