{"title":"An Interview with Hugh Herr","authors":"Marwa ElDiwiny","doi":"10.1089/rorep.2023.29005.int","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1089/rorep.2023.29005.int","url":null,"abstract":"Robotics ReportsVol. 1, No. 1 InterviewOpen AccessCreative Commons licenseAn Interview with Hugh HerrInterview by Marwa ElDiwinyInterview by Marwa ElDiwinyMarwa ElDiwiny, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium. Hugh Herr, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:19 Oct 2023https://doi.org/10.1089/rorep.2023.29005.intAboutSectionsPDF/EPUB Permissions & CitationsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Marwa ElDiwinyMarwa ElDiwiny: I would like to go back to when I think you started your career, and it is very inspirational. I am curious about when you started at age 17 years, what kind of rebirth happened to you to start thinking about new bodies?Hugh Herr: When I was 17 years, I was in a mountain climbing accident and I suffered frostbite to my lower legs. After months of effort, my medical team had to amputate my legs due to the health risk of gangrene. After my legs were amputated, I wanted to return to my chosen sport of mountain climbing, so I designed and fabricated my own artificial limbs for the vertical world. I had specialized limbs for standing on small rock edges, the width of a coin. I had specialized limbs for climbing steep ice walls, and so on. From this body hacking, if you will, I was able to climb at a more advanced level about a year after my legs were amputated than I had achieved before the accident with biological limbs. This was very inspiring, and it led me to my current research objective of human augmentation.Marwa ElDiwiny: I admire being creative. I am curious about this motivation and inspiration to design your own artificial limb. How did you start the design?Hugh Herr: At the time I did not have many resources, and I was not educated in engineering and design, but I was familiar with machining. I spent my high school in a machining curriculum, so I did know my way around a shop. Using passive materials, I fabricated feet, I optimized their geometry, their impedance, their compliance for these various extreme conditions of ice and rock climbing. It worked remarkably well. As I stated, I could climb more difficult faces than I could achieve before the accident. From that experience, I realized that technology has the power to heal, to rehabilitate, and, in my own case, the authority to augment human capability. That inspired me to go back to school and study science and engineering and design.Marwa ElDiwiny: How do you define the relationship between the brain and the body? Should the human body necessarily be the same shape all the time?Hugh Herr: The field of bionics, human bionics seeks to develop synthetic and biological constructs that in the end emulate an anthropomorphic, or normal biological morphology and dynamics. But of course, augmentation is broader than that objective. We can imagine nonanthropomorphic capabilities, humans with t","PeriodicalId":93426,"journal":{"name":"Current robotics reports","volume":"202 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135921927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Roundtable Discussion with Josie Hughes and Yiğit Mengüç","authors":"Surya Nurzaman, Josie Hughes, Yig˘it Mengüç","doi":"10.1089/rorep.2023.29004.snu","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1089/rorep.2023.29004.snu","url":null,"abstract":"Robotics ReportsVol. 1, No. 1 Roundtable DiscussionOpen AccessCreative Commons licenseA Roundtable Discussion with Josie Hughes and Yiğit MengüçModerator: Surya Nurzaman, Participants: Josie Hughes, and Yig˘it MengüçModerator: Surya NurzamanSurya Nurzaman, Monash University Malaysia, Bandar Sunway, Malaysia.Search for more papers by this author, Participants: Josie HughesJosie Hughes, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.Search for more papers by this author, and Yig˘it MengüçYiğit Mengüç, Marble Wit Research, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:19 Oct 2023https://doi.org/10.1089/rorep.2023.29004.snuAboutSectionsPDF/EPUB Permissions & CitationsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Surya NurzamanJosie HughesYiğit MengüçSurya Nurzaman: Robotics Reports has invited two cochairs of the IEEE technical committee (TC) and soft robotics, which is a nonprofit organization that tries to push forward the field of soft robotics. With us today, we have Josie Hughes and Yiğit Mengüç to discuss the progress and challenges in the soft robotics field. My name is Surya Nurzaman, and I am the editor-in-chief of Robotics Reports, and I will be the moderator of the discussion. I am a senior lecturer at Monash University at the Malaysia campus, and my field is related to soft robotics and bioinspired robotics. Josie and Yiğit, please introduce yourselves and your fields.Josie Hughes: Hi, I am Josie Hughes, and I am an assistant professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, where I started 2 years ago. My background is in manipulation, soft robotics, and my laboratory, CREATE Lab, looks at developing new design methodologies and fabrication approaches for soft robots that look to exploit interactions with the environment.Surya Nurzaman: Thank you Josie. Yiğit?Yiğit Mengüç: Thank you for organizing, Surya. My name is Yiğit Mengüç and I am currently an independent researcher, I guess I would say, and my background is in mechanical engineering. Formerly, as a professor of my laboratory, I used to work on materials, mechanics, and the manufacturing methods for creating soft robots. Then I worked at Facebook for a few years looking at virtual reality, so wearable soft robots, haptic gloves. Now, I am looking at the relationship between technology and the impact it has on us as individuals and on our communities.Surya Nurzaman: Thank you, Josie and Yiğit. To begin, can you explain how you define soft robots and why it is important?Josie Hughes: Good question to start with. Soft robotics is two things: one, it is a way of technically and from an engineering perspective designing robots that seeks to move away from a paradigm where we have very rigid and precise control to something where we exploit the environment, so this means moving more to soft materials, soft structures, and developing these techno","PeriodicalId":93426,"journal":{"name":"Current robotics reports","volume":"126 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135921928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jorge Peña Queralta, Farhad Keramat, Salma Salimi, Lei Fu, Xianjia Yu, Tomi Westerlund
{"title":"Blockchain and Emerging Distributed Ledger Technologies for Decentralized Multi-robot Systems","authors":"Jorge Peña Queralta, Farhad Keramat, Salma Salimi, Lei Fu, Xianjia Yu, Tomi Westerlund","doi":"10.1007/s43154-023-00101-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s43154-023-00101-3","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Purpose of Review: Distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), particularly blockchain, are paving the way to securing and managing distributed and large-scale systems of autonomous agents. We look into how these technologies are moving out of the lab and into the real world within the robotics field. Recent Findings: Despite the scalability and real-world applicability concerns, new solutions have emerged that show resilience to intermittent connectivity, as well as scalable solutions for managed or permissioned networks. Summary: We present a review on the various use cases that different DLTs can support in multi-robot systems. We argue that the majority of the work to date on open and permissionless blockchains is only applicable to a subset of robotics use cases, with novel DLT architectures and permissioned blockchains driving adoption across industrial and more mature application scenarios.","PeriodicalId":93426,"journal":{"name":"Current robotics reports","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135243452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bioinspired Soft Robotics: State of the Art, Challenges, and Future Directions","authors":"Maxwell Hammond, Venanzio Cichella, Caterina Lamuta","doi":"10.1007/s43154-023-00102-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s43154-023-00102-2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":93426,"journal":{"name":"Current robotics reports","volume":"80 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136154807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Autonomous Testing of the Repeatable Healability of Pneumatic Self-Healing Soft Actuators","authors":"Julie Legrand, Arsen Abdulali, David Hardman, Seppe Terryn, Bram Vanderborght, Fumiya Iida","doi":"10.1089/rorep.2023.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1089/rorep.2023.0014","url":null,"abstract":"The maximum number of damage and healing cycles that can be endured by a self-healing (SH) actuator, that is, its repeatable healability, has never been assessed. One reason for this is because healability was always tested manually. Typically, an operator uses a sharp blade to manually damage the actuator and places both damaged edges back together for them to heal. This process is time consuming, which explains why only a limited amount of damage and healing cycles has been reported. Moreover, this leads to an inaccurate estimation of how repeatable the actuator's healability is, since manual damage cannot be always performed at the exact same location. Therefore, we present a method to automatically and autonomously assess the repeatable healability of a soft SH actuator. It uses a robotic system composed of a damage station and a healing station, which the actuator is automatically moved between using a robotic arm. A sensor integrated inside the actuator is used alongside a dedicated characterization algorithm to automatically indicate whether the actuator is properly damaged and healed. We present a typical use case of the system, performing and analyzing 63 damage cycles of a selfhealing Diels–Alder actuator. After 53 cycles, the actuator will never properly heal again, therefore, we consider this cycle to be the maximum repeatable healability of the tested actuator. The healability of the SH Diels–Alder actuator is, therefore, not infinite experimentally.","PeriodicalId":93426,"journal":{"name":"Current robotics reports","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134993810","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}