STIFF-FLOP

The STIFF-FLOP consortium collected updates on the current progress of the project in the latest Newsletter D6.3.2 which is now available on the website in the NEWSLETTER section.

Mission of Foundation of Cardiac Surgery Development is introduction into clinical practice modern techniques and technologies for heart diseases treatment. But it is also a famous educational center.

Read more: Education – the important way to clinical application

King’s College and Tecnalia conducted the first benchmarking experiments of the Stiff-Flop concept, to analyze the behavior of the system when interacting with its environment. As illustrated on the figure, the system tested was composed of a arm composed of two flexible structures, mounted onto a vertical support. By controlling the pressures in the chambers of the module(s), the arm gets into contact with an obstacle, and the magnitude of the contact forces is measured. Experiments were performed by augmenting the pressure in one (bending) or all chambers (elongation) of the module.

Read more: First benchmarking experiments

A joint integration work of IIT, Shadow and Tecnalia permitted to implement a first version of robot tip position control in the stiff-flop architecture. An inverse kinematic framework enables to deduce from a targeted tip location the needed modules configuration, under the constant curvature assumption.Each module desired configuration can then be transmitted to each module controller, in charge of computing the appropriate combination of pressures in the chambers.

Read more: Towards a position-based control

London’s Science Museum hosted a three-day festival dedicated to robots inspired by nature. A video can be found here: BBC News

(STIFF-FLOP can be found at 1:39)

Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA) worked on the development of a multi-module STIFF‐FLOP manipulator.

Read more: Development of a multi-module STIFF‐FLOP manipulator

It’s EU Robotics Week time again. For the third consecutive year, the achievements of Europe’s researchers and inventors working in robotics are celebrated in over 300 events from November 25th to December 1st. Here are some examples of the best EU-funded Robotics projects: 5 cool robots the EU is funding

This November, Robot SafariEU at the Science Museum will explore the fascinating world of biomimetic robots. Beginning on Wednesday 27th November at Lates and continuing over the weekend (30 Nov – 1 Dec), visitors can trek through the un-natural habitats of these robots, interacting with creatures that swim, flap, and crawl, in a unique safari experience.

Read more: STIFF-FLOP goes wild during Robot Safari (EU)