Paper on monolithic elephant-inspired soft gripper

[andersonnardin]

Paper from the Soft BioRobotics Perception lab at IIT presenting MELEGROS, a monolithic elephant-inspired soft gripper integrating structure, actuation, and sensing in a single 3D-printed body.

The system embeds optical sensors and pneumatic chambers within a lattice architecture, enabling simultaneous deformation and proprioceptive sensing, and supporting a wide range of bioinspired manipulation tasks.

In this work, SOFA was extensively used for simulation and design improvement, supporting the development of a fully soft, elephant-inspired manipulator based on a monolithic approach. The study represents a step forward for soft robotics, showing that simulation-guided design can effectively replace laborious trial-and-error prototyping and move robotic manipulation closer to the efficiency and elegance observed in biological systems.

We are also pleased to share that the work has been featured as a cover in Advanced Science.

Many thanks to the entire SOFA community for the continuous support!

Read the full paper here:
https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202518878

Cover:

Video:

melegros.1.mp4

[hugtalbot]

Congratulations @andersonnardin and excellent to have posted it in this "Achievements" category in our GitHub Discussion forum !
It would be awesome to have you presenting at the upcoming SOFA Week in November

👏 🚀 👏

[andersonnardin]

Thank you very much, @hugtalbot, I really appreciate it.

It would be a pleasure to present it at the SOFA Week, a great opportunity to show this work and share more details with the community.