Full Day Online Workshop
Grand Challenges for Burrowing Soft Robots
Nature has many examples of soft burrowers. One of the fastest soft burrowers is the Razor Clam.
[Registered attendees will receive an email with the link to join to talks]
Abstract
State-of-the-art soft robots that can burrow into soil or granular media are limited. Due to sub-terranean forces acting on the robot body, enabling burrowing soft robotic applications is highly challenging and requires deeper research. Nature provides many examples of successful burrowing mechanisms, exhibited by organisms as varied as worms, bivalve mollusks, and plants. How can we learn from biology and create more capable soft burrowing robots? By analyzing soft biological burrowing mechanisms, and identifying the grand challenges we need to overcome, we can manufacture next-generation soft burrowing robots. In this workshop, we will convene experts across disciplines: physics, biology, robotics, mechanical engineering, and materials science to discuss the grand challenges and how to solve them. Furthermore, with an additional speaker from industry, this workshop will also highlight how the advantages of soft robots can be harnessed for burrowing applications, minimize disruption to the environment while digging and real-world use cases.
Invited Speakers
Daniel Goldman
Georgia Institute of Technology
Professor
Nicholas Naclerio
UC Santa Barbara
Ph.D Candidate
Kelly Dorgan
Dauphin Island Sea Lab
Assistant Professor
Kris Zacny
Honeybee Robotics
Vice President
Patrick Harkness
University of Glasgow
Professor
Osman Dogan Yirmibesoglu
Yale University
Post-Doc Associate
Yasemin Ozkan Aydin
Notre Dame University
Assistant Professor
Ali Sadeghi
University of Twente
Assistant Professor
Deepak Trivedi
General Electric
Mechanical Engineer
Junliang Tao
Arizona State University
Associate Professor
Details
This workshop will focus on identifying the grand challenges for burrowing soft robots. Our full day workshop will start with a welcome at 9 am. After the opening & introduction, our talks will focus on burrowing media and biological examples of burrowing soft animals. Towards the afternoon, the focus will shift to successful burrowing soft robotic mechanisms. Later, we will continue with principles of burrowing and contextualization in real-world use cases. Finally, we will end the workshop with networking, discussions, and a summary of the identified challenges.
Participants of this workshop will gain an understanding of the different soft biological burrowing animals and their strategies to deal with acting high sub-terranean forces, the effect of different types of granular media on burrowing, how to use bio-inspiration to carry nature’s solutions into robotics, knowledge of the state-of-the-art soft burrowing robot examples, and the importance of minimally disruptive burrowing on real-world use cases. More significantly, participants will have a chance to discuss grand challenges with speakers at the end of the workshop with pre-defined questions and share their group discussion summaries with each other for new solution ideas that may nurture collaboration between researchers.
Tentative Schedule
| Time | Schedule | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| 9:00 - 9:10 | Opening, agenda, introductions | |
| 9:10 – 9:50 | Dr. Ali Sadeghi | Growing robots: a solution inspired by soft plant roots for exploration in hard soils |
| 9:50 – 10:30 | Dr. Patrick Harkness | Ultrasonically enhanced flow of granular material |
| 10:30 – 11:10 | Nicholas Naclerio | Robotic burrowing and self-anchoring inspired by plant roots |
| 11:10 – 11:30 | Break | |
| 11:30 – 12:10 | Dr. Yasemin Ozkan Aydin | Lateral bending and buckling aids biological and robotic earthworm anchoring and locomotion |
| 12:10 – 12:50 | Dr. Osman Dogan Yirmibesoglu | Challenges ahead: Burrowing with soft robots |
| 12:50 – 13:30 | Dr. Deepak Trivedi | Efficient, long distance tunneling inspired by earthworms and tree roots |
| 13:30 – 14:00 | Lunch | |
| 14:00 – 14:40 | Dr. Daniel Goldman | Locomotion within dry granular media |
| 14:40 – 15:20 | Dr. Kelly Dorgan | How muds fail? - A burrower’s perspective |
| 15:20 – 15:30 | Break | |
| 15:30 – 16:10 | Dr. Junliang Tao | Burrowing and Symmetry Breaking |
| 16:10 – 16:50 | Dr. Kris Zacny | Exploring Europa ocean with a nuclear powered thermo-mechanical probe |
| 16:50 – 17:00 | Break | |
| 17:00 – 17:15 | Speed Networking | |
| 17:15 – 17:45 | Discussion | |
| 17:45 – 17:55 | Summary & Farewell | |
Questions for Discussion Session
In the discussion section, based on participant number, we will divide participants to break out rooms. We would like to nourish discussions with the following questions:
- What soil classifications are you most interested in, and how deep do robots need to burrow to collect required data?
- Which burrowing strategies do you think are most viable and useful for soft robots?
- What are the advantages for using soft burrowing robots?
- What is the most important characteristic for a successful burrowing robot? Size, speed, cargo capacity, energy efficiency, achievable depth, etc.
- What is your vision for the soft robotics field after 5 years from now?
Special Issue on Bio-Inspired Burrowing Robots
A wide range of biological systems burrow into the soil for reasons such as feeding, protection, and growth. There are many strategies driven by different environmental factors that enable these organisms to successfully burrow in various substrates including soft, homogeneous/heterogeneous, cohesive soil, granular media, hard and stiff surfaces, etc. The burrowing performance of biological systems inspires researchers to design robotic systems that can burrow and navigate in the soil for purposes such as agricultural monitoring and investigation, space exploration, search and rescue operations, ecological analysis, mining, etc. However, for human-made systems, burrowing introduces a challenging set of problems because of high subterranean resistive drag forces and lift forces.
Gaining an understanding of how biological systems successfully burrow within a variety of media can lead to the development of new kinds of materials, mechanisms and robots and opens many possibilities for science and technology to address real-world problems. The goal of this Research Topic is to further our understanding of a variety of biological burrowing strategies and morphologies, biological/engineering materials, bio-inspired technologies, and approaches that enable successful burrowing in a variety of environments.
In this research topic, we would like to collect recent findings and novel approaches in the field of burrowing robots. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Biological burrowing mechanisms and their robotic counterparts
- Real-time sensing and feedback methods for burrowing
- Burrowing in granular and cohesive media
- Bioinspired soft burrowing robots
- Burrowing behaviors in legged robots
- Grand challenges of autonomous subterranean locomotion
Keywords: Bioinspired burrowing/digging robots, burrowing animals/plants, biomechanics
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
Organization Committee
Osman Dogan Yirmibesoglu
Yale University
Post-Doc Associate
Trevor Buckner
Yale University
Graduate Student
Yasemin Ozkan Aydin
Notre Dame University
Assistant Professor
