Rosalind Franklin Society Proudly Announces the 2022 Award Recipient
for Soft Robotics

Numerous recent advances in robotics have been inspired by the biological principle of tensile integrity—or “tensegrity”—to achieve remarkable feats of dexterity and resilience. Tensegrity robots contain compliant networks of rigid struts and soft cables, allowing them to change their shape by adjusting their internal tension. Local rigidity along the struts provides support to carry electronics and scientific payloads, while global compliance enabled by the flexible interconnections of struts and cables allows a tensegrity to distribute impacts and prevent damage. Numerous techniques have been proposed for designing and simulating tensegrity robots, giving rise to a wide range of locomotion modes, including rolling, vibrating, hopping, and crawling. In this study, we review progress in the burgeoning field of tensegrity robotics, highlighting several emerging challenges, including automated design, state sensing, and kinodynamic motion planning.

Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio is the John J. Lee associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Yale University. Focusing on the intersection of materials, manufacturing, and robotics, her group is deriving new multifunctional materials that will allow next-generation robots to adapt their morphology and behavior to changing tasks and environments. She is the winner of multiple early career awards including the National Science Foundation Career Award, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Early Career Award, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award. She was named to the Forbes “30 under 30” list for her approach to manufacturing liquid metals through printable emulsions and scalable sintering methods. She received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers, for her development of robotic skins that turn inanimate objects into multifunctional robots.