The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recently held its International Conference on Soft Robotics 2022 (RoboSoft 2022) and a soft robotics competition during this conference. This year, it was hosted by the University of Edinburgh, and the event was held in a hybrid online/in-person format.

The Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) participated in the competition as their team named SUSTank won the first prize in the terrestrial race category.

The winning SUSTech team was made up of undergraduates from the Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering (MEE). Their members included Songhao HUANG, Anlun HUANG, Yixuan XIA, Boyu YANG, and Xipeng ZHANG, and were guided by Hongqiang WANG, Associate Professor of the Department of MEE.

The competition attracted teams from many renowned universities worldwide, including the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Singapore.

The competition consists of two main categories: manipulation and locomotion. The teams had to demonstrate their robots’ adaptability, automatic control, and system integration, allowing them to be competitive during the competition under different terrains.

The soft robot from the SUSTech team was made up of a combination of a software rotary drive and a crawler traveling mechanism. Driven by air pumps, the robot can achieve high-efficiency movement, lateral deformation and contraction, navigate on various terrains such as slopes, sand, and roads, and move forward independently between random doorposts.

RoboSoft is a top conference in soft robotics that brings together experts and scholars in this area from all over the world every year. It aims to showcase the latest developments in this field, provide a platform for researchers and scientists to exchange new research, new technologies, and new applications, and promote the development of the world’s soft robotics field.