Section: Application Domains

Industry

Robotics in the manufacturing industry is already highly diffused and is one of the ways put forward to maintain the level of competitiveness of companies based in France and to avoid relocation in cheap labor countries. Yet, in France, it is considered that the level of robotization is insufficient compared to Germany for instance. One of the challenge is the high investment cost for buying robotic arms. In the recent years, it has led the development of « generic » and « flexible » (but rigid) robotic solution that can be produced in series. But their applicability to specific tasks is still challenging or too costly. The manufacturing of deformable robots could be very low compared to classical rigid robotics. Moreover, with the development of 3D printing, we can imagine the development of a complete opposite strategy: a « task-specific » design of robots. Given a task that need to be performed by a deformable robot: we would optimize the shape of its structure to create the set of desired motion (see in Challenge2: Exploring interactive and semi-automatic optimisation methods for design). An other remarkable property of soft-robots is their adaptability to fragile or tortuous environment. For some particular industry, this could also be an advantage compared to existing rigid solutions.