Last month, we attended #RoboSoft2025 with 📄 papers, 🌟 Rising Stars, ⚒️ workshops, and 🧠 extended abstracts! We had a blast meeting everyone, and see you next time!

We hosted an ICRA 2025 satellite event at Yale! Big thanks to everyone who joined us for robotics talks and community 🦾🤖 #ICRA2025

Our latest review explores how softness enables natural burrowers to move efficiently underground, and how these biological insights can advance the next generation of burrowing robots. 🔗 Read: 🎥 Watch:

Happy holidays from the Faboratory! May your holidays be as sweet as ours 🍪

Stephanie Woodman, a PhD candidate from our lab, was interviewed by SparkFun Electronics about her recent publication "Stretchable Arduinos embedded in soft robots." Check it out here:

Our article "Robots that Can Survive the Egg Drop" was published today in the Soft Robotics collection of Frontiers for Young Minds. Young readers can learn about the advantages tensegrity robots and what they might be used for in the future.

In this review, we outline two key advancements needed for general shape-changing robots: robot-agnostic stretchable shape sensing and stretchable computing. Final version publishes May 2025. Pre-print available now:

Our new paper, led by our collaborators in the Pracsys Group at Rutgers, shows how the inherent graph-like structure of a tensegrity robot enables us to learn contact dynamics efficiently using a Graph Neural Network. Catch it next week at CoRL! Preprint:

By patterning liquid metals onto a soft and tacky substrate, we created circuits that stretch to over 4x their length—making them stretchable and robust enough for use in soft robots. Read our paper here:

In a complex pipe network, a vine robot may interact with itself when retracing its path. "This work presents an experimental approach to investigating and characterizing [this interaction] inside of a pipe T-junction.".

Using fibers that stiffen or soften on command, we can morph one robotic skin into two different shapes. Using a fiber merging protocol, we simplify the number of fibers used and improve the shape accuracy. Read more here:

By combining a layer of fabric with liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs), a "class of responsive materials for shape-morphable structures," a bilayer bending actuator can be made. Read more here:

Using thermoplastic elastomer, we make a reversible joint that "allows for strong attachment and easy detachment of distributed soft robot modules without direct human handling.". Read more here:

This variable stiffness robotic skin "integrates stiffness-changing capabilities, sensing, and actuation into a single, thin modular robot design.". Read more here:

Incorporating liquid metal circuits and orientation sensors, stretchable shape-sensing sheets provide real-time shape estimation without requiring a predefined model of the system. Read more here:

Our recent paper "Compliant Electropermanent Magnets" is now available on IEEE Xplore! Learn how we combine different magnetic powders with silicone rubber to make a soft composite material with electropermanent properties.

Our amphibious robotic turtle traveled to California this past March for #MARS2024.

Congratulations to Faboratory undergraduate students Neera Raychaudhuri and Nimran Shergill for winning NSF Graduate Research Fellowships!

RT @NSF: 👏👏Congratulations to the 2024 Alan T. Waterman Award recipients for their groundbreaking contributions in biomedical engineering,….

RT @NSFDrPanch: Last night, we celebrated the three Alan T. Waterman awardees whose hard work and dedication to advancing the progress of s….