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Summer school on deformation in robotics
29 Jun-3 Jul 2026 Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France (France)
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Program > Day 1 - Introduction to Deformations in RoboticsDay 1 - Introduction to Deformation in Robotics10:00-11:00: Lecture: "Introduction to deformable robotics completed with some activities at FEMTO-ST" - Kanty Rabenorosoa
Abstract: This lecture will introduce deformable robotics. The soft robots are made of deformable materials that have large numbers of degrees of freedom and potentially offer inherently safe and adaptable ways of achieving tasks as grasping, locomotion, and manipulation. A soft robot can homogeneously combine actuation, sensing, and structural complexity within the same component of the robot. From historical point of view, the different types of actuators will be presented and the principles of operation explained. Their integration on soft robots will be discussed and some examples of soft robots with exceptional capabilities will be highlighted. Finally, some activities at FEMTO-ST on soft and Continuum robotics will be presented.  Bio: Kanty Rabenorosoa received an M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France, in 2007, and the Ph.D. degree in automatic control from the University of Franche-Comté, Besançon, France, in 2010. From 2011 to 2012, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow with Laboratoire d’Informatique, de Robotique et de Micro-électronique de Montpellier, University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France. He was an Associate Professor at ENSMM-SUPMICROTECH from 2012 to 2023. He is currently a full Professor (section 61) at Université Marie et Louis Pasteur (UMLP) with the Automatic Control and Micro-Mechatronic Systems (AS2M) department of FEMTO-ST Institute. His research interests include mechatronics, smart actuator, origami-based robots, soft and continuum microrobotics for medical applications.
11:30-12:30: Keynote to be defined14:30-15:30: Keynotes "Modeling and materials in Soft Robotics: an historical and epistemological perspective." - Olivia ChevalierAbstract: We would like to outline the history of soft and deformable robotics (SDR) here, in order to identify its foundations and epistemological issues. Walter’s work in the 1950s, followed by Brooks’s in the 1980s and 1990s, laid some of the foundations for SDR: to reproduce appropriate behaviours – which therefore require compliance – in an environment not encoded in the robot. But, from Walter’s mobile turtle robots in the 1950s, through Brooks’s animats (based on subsumption architectures), to today’s SDR, we would like to examine as well an initial break: the key role played by materials and their properties in achieving this goal (non-linearity) – since the design of autonomous robots capable of ‘flexible’ behaviour was limited by the use of rigid materials – along with all the challenges this entails in terms of modelling, simulation and control. It is therefore this story of a number of technical and epistemological challenges that we wish to outline briefly here.  Bio: Olivia Chevalier, PhD in Philosophy, Research Fellow in the Philosophy of Science (Institut Mines-Télécom BS, GDR Robotics and Society). Her research initially focused on scientific rationality in the classical era (in the works of Descartes and Leibniz) and its contemporary relevance. It now extends to an examination of the epistemological implications of new technologies (AI and deformable robotics) in various fields: initially in surgery within the Bopa Chair (Augmented Operating Theatre, APHP – Paris Saclay), and currently as part of the PEPR O2R (Organic Robotics, Inria, IMT-Atlantique, Femto, CNRS).
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