Call for Papers

Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

The materials composing soft robots and nanorobots have a critical role in these rapidly advancing fields because they determine the capabilities, complexity, and reproducibility of their motions. Remote actuation with magnetic fields is of intense interest for soft robots and nanorobots because magnetic fields can penetrate long distances, are biocompatible, and offer directional control of a structure’s motion. Magnetic materials are also programmable through magnetic hysteresis and magnetic anisotropy, including magnetocrystalline anisotropy, shape anisotropy, and anisotropy through interacting particles, such as chains. This symposium aims to bring together an interdisciplinary group of researchers from soft robotics and nanorobotics to present and discuss the latest developments in these fields. All experimental and theoretical aspects of these materials and their applications are of interest, including the design of new materials and actuation mechanisms, fabrication (including self-assembly and 3D printing), structural design, programmability, reconfigurability, multifunctionality, collective behavior, apparatus for actuation, modeling material and actuation behaviors, controls (including artificial intelligence), integrated sensing for responding to environmental stimuli, biomedical applications, assistive devices, augmented reality, and aerospace applications. Bottom-up and top-down methods for fabrication and structures with mechanical properties spanning soft and hard materials are of interest.

Topics will include:

• Fabrication methods
• Programming actuation behaviors and reconfigurability
• Design of magnetically actuated soft robots and nanorobots and size scaling
• Modeling material and actuation behaviors
• Multifunctional magnetically actuated soft robots and nanorobots
• Apparatus and methods for controlling actuation
• Applications, including biomedicine, assistive devices, augmented reality, and aerospace

Invited Speakers (tentative):

• David Cappelleri (Purdue University, USA)
• Jun Chen (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
• Hongsoo Choi (Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology, Republic of Korea)
• Benjamin Evans (Elon University, USA)
• Damien Faivre (Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, France)
• Peer Fischer (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany)
• Hoon-Eui Jeong (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea)
• Abigail Juhl (Air Force Research Laboratory, USA)
• Jürgen Kosel (Silicon Austria Labs, Austria)
• Meng Li (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany)
• Denys Makarov (Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Germany)
• Bradley Nelson (ETH Zürich, Switzerland)
• Josep Puigmartí (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)
• Selman Sakar (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)
• Oliver Schmidt (Technische Universität Chemnitz, Germany)
• Simone Schürle-Finke (ETH Zürich, Switzerland)
• Metin Sitti (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany)
• Pietro Tierno (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)
• Orlin Velev (North Carolina State University, USA)
• Guang-Zhong Yang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China)
• Yadong Yin (University of California, Riverside, USA)
• Li Zhang (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
• Ruike Renee Zhao (Stanford University, USA)

Symposium Organizers