Advances in Soft Robotics are leading to increasingly challenging designs in terms of desired geometries, material distributions, and functionality. Traditional sequential casting and additive manufacture approaches present various limitations for fabrication and new techniques are needed. Furthermore, new available structural functionality presents a tremendous opportunity for new techniques in morphological computation, i.e. the way computation, control, and sensing are facilitated by the robot’s morphology which may include its shape, deformability and material properties. Recent advances in fabrication techniques and morphological computation are poised to further expand application areas, performance, as well as the impact of Soft Robots.

This workshop aims to present the latest advances in the fields of fabrication and morphological computation for soft robotics. Talks will describe new and novel ideas in both fields and various ways in which they can be applied to the field of soft robotics. The workshop will also serve to highlight important challenges still facing the field and potential approaches needed to overcome them.