POSE: Phase I: Open Source Soft Robotics (OSSR): An Open-Source Ecosystem to Increase Access and Enable Discovery of Soft Robotic Technologies

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This POSE Phase I project establishes a community-driven effort to provide essential access to the fundamental components of the field of soft robotics and empower all members of the community to create new applications of soft robotics in all areas of the economy with reduced difficulty. This is through a combination of community management, design activities, and curation of well-documented and accessible open-source technologies that lower the barrier to entry for those looking to contribute to and innovative in this field. The project has invested, diverse leadership and collects and disseminates domain knowledge and standardized approaches for the fabrication, design, characterization, modeling, and material selection for soft robotics. This project builds upon the foundation of existing efforts of the Soft Robotics Toolkit and explores the scope and needs of the soft robotics community, inclusive of all facets such as academia, industry, art, hobby, and other overlapping sectors. The project also explores how soft robotics can bring together materials science, engineering disciplines, and biology and thereby serve to further entice larger audiences to participate, in particular underrepresented minority groups commonly excluded in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. To assess the needs of the soft robotics community, this project seeks expert insights, performs key stakeholder interviews, and distributes broad surveys. This project engages and interviews many of the stakeholders for the field of soft robotics. Relevant groups include: academic units, faculty, students studying soft robotics, industries and companies involved in soft robots, members of the hobby and art community that experiment with soft robots, as well as professional organizations that contribute to open-source products in general. Additionally, the project uses digital surveys to determine the needs of the aforementioned groups, while being inclusive of a broader audience and assessing general trends. The project establishes an organizing body incite growth of the community. The goal is to create a comprehensive and distributed resource that provides essential access to the fundamental components of the field and empowers all members of the soft robotics community to create new applications of soft robotics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.