Emmy Noether group advances soft materials for robotics

Soft robots, built from flexible materials rather than rigid metals or plastics, open new opportunities in medical technology and industry. At the University of Stuttgart, Jun.-Prof. Aniket Pal has established the Soft Robotics Mechanics Group to study viscoelastic polymers as part of the Emmy Noether Program, which provides 1.5 million euros in funding starting September 2025.

“This funding will allow my research group to significantly expand its research,” says Pal. “We are conducting research in a relatively new field; developing mechanisms that deform depending upon the speed of applied forces and making them suitable for use in soft robotics.”

Unlike traditional robot systems, soft robots rely on specially designed polymers that can adapt to their environment. Pal’s group focuses on viscoelastic materials, which display both solid-like elasticity and fluid-like viscosity.

• When exposed to rapid forces, they act elastically.
• Under slow deformation, they show viscous, fluid-like behavior.

This duality makes them highly suitable for robotic systems where adaptability and safe interaction with delicate objects are essential.

Pal emphasizes: “Development involves not only selecting the right material but also designing its geometric structure at the millimeter scale—and understanding the complex interplay between viscoelastic deformation and mechanical instability,” These structures, designed to achieve specific properties, are referred to as mechanical metamaterials.

Soft materials for robotics could transform practical use cases:

• Medical field: gentle robotic grippers for surgery or rehabilitation, flexible implants such as bone substitutes
• Industrial field: adaptable grippers for sensitive production processes
• Safety equipment: advanced helmets capable of absorbing impact energy more effectively

Such applications highlight the relevance of soft robotics for both healthcare professionals and engineers.

To advance the field, Pal and his team plan to make their research openly accessible. Once they have fully characterized viscoelastic materials through experiments, they will publish the resulting dataset as open source. They also aim to develop analytical and numerical models to predict the behavior of soft materials and optimize their design for robotics. This work contributes to building the foundation for future medical technology, prosthetics, industrial automation, and wearable safety equipment, fields where soft robots could play a decisive role.

COMPAMED-tradefair.com; Source: University of Stuttgart