Supercon 2023: Soft Actuators As Assistive Tech

When we think of assistive prostheses or braces, we often think of hard and rigid contraptions. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that prosthetic limbs were still being made out of wood. Eve…

A Robot Face With Human Skin

Many scifi robots have taken the form of their creators. In the increasingly blurry space between the biological and the mechanical, researchers have found a way to affix human skin to robot faces.…

Soft Robotic System For In Situ 3D Bioprinting And Endoscopic Surgery

The progress of medical science has meant increasingly more sophisticated ways to inspect and repair the body, with a shift towards ever less invasive and more effective technologies. An exciting n…

Complex Movements From Simple Inflatables, Thanks To Physics

Inflatable actuators that change shape based on injected pressure can be strong, but their big limitation is that they always deform in the same way. But by taking structural inspiration from origa…

Can Robots Give Good Hugs?

We could all use a hug once in a while. Most people would probably say the shared warmth is nice, and the squishiness of another living, breathing meatbag is pretty comforting. Hugs even have healt…

Squishy Robot Hardware Does Well Under Pressure

If your jealousy for Festo robots is festering, fret not! [mikey77] has shown us that, even without giant piggy banks, we can still construct some fantastic soft robotics projects with a 3D printer…

The BornHack Badge Gets A Bubble

In a year of semiconductor shortages it’s a difficult task to deliver an electronic conference badge, so this year’s BornHack camp in Denmark had an SAO prototyping board as its badge. …

Get Your Flex On With The FlowIO Platform

Hackaday Prize 2021 entry FlowIO Platform promises to be to pneumatics what Arduino is to Electronics. The modular platform comprises a common controller/valve block, a selection of differently siz…