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DEFROST Research team

DEFormable Robotics SofTware

Team presentation

Our Vision

Future robots don’t need to be «rigid» but made of complex deformable structures, composed of stiff and soft regions, close to organic materials that we can find in the nature. Soft robotics opens very attractive perspectives in terms of new applications, reduction of manufacturing costs, robustness, efficiency and security. It could constitute a great jump in robotics in the following years.

The challenge

The biggest obstacle to make this possible is that the current methods to design and control don’t work for deformable ones and new approaches have to be invented.

To overcome this obstacle we work on a novel approach that integrates a real-time model of both the robot deformations and its interaction into the control loop of the soft robots. This is where the challenge begins…

Research themes

  • Modeling soft robots with strong real-time constraints
  • Model based control of soft-robot behavior
  • Model and control of interaction with complex environment
  • Simulation software and computer aided design for soft-robots 
  • Applications (Surgery, Medicine, Art, Industry ...)

International and industrial relations

Accademic collaborations:

  • King's College
  • Université de Luxembourg
  • Stanford University
  • University of Naples
  • ...

Industrial collaborations:

  • TDR (robotic system integration)
  • InSimo (surgical simulation)
  • Naviworks (surgical simulation)

Keywords: Deformable robots Soft robots Robot simulation Contact modeling Control methods Real-time

Research teams of the same theme :

Inria Headquarters and research centres

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Resources