Designing soft robots: concepts, tools, operation and effects
RWTH Publications (RWTH Aachen)
Abstract
Soft robots, unlike traditional rigid robots, use flexible materials that enable safe, adaptive, and organic interactions with their environment. Their natural movements make them well-suited for applications ranging from surgery and assistive devices to expressive interfaces in HCI. Although the concept dates back to early pneumatic artificial muscles in the 1950s, major progress accelerated only in the 1990s and 2000s with advances in silicone microactuators. Over the years, innovations such as tentacle-inspired actuators, soft grippers, exosuits, and autonomous soft robots have expanded the field’s capabilities. Today, soft robots represent an increasingly mature and versatile class of systems that blend biology-inspired design with safe, embodied interaction. This thesis investigates how soft robots can be designed, operated, and understood by novice users, and how their shape-changing motions influence human perception. We introduce two toolkits: SoRoCAD for designing and fabricating soft robots, and Flow board for the live, visual programming of embedded hardware such as soft robots. We show through multiple user studies that both tools help novices to shape their mental models, foster engagement, and enable accessible soft-robot actuation. We further examine how people perceive the motion of soft robots, first through virtual soft robots co-created with users, and then through physical wearable soft robots to analyze how motion parameters convey emotion to both observers and wearers. Our findings show that parameters such as symmetry, speed, and repetition significantly shape emotional perception, with tactile and visual experiences aligning even when motions are misidentified. Together, these contributions advance accessible soft robot design, support learning in fabrication and actuation, and offer empirical insights for creating expressive soft robot interactions in HCI.
Authors 1
-
Affiliation as printed
RWTH Aachen