Kyle Yoshida — Collaborative Approaches to Haptics and Soft Robotics Research

Novel haptic interfaces and soft robots are integral to our increasingly digital world. Haptics can enhance robot teleoperation for various tasks including gaming, caregiving, and agriculture, while soft robots enable human-robot interaction and delicate object manipulation due to their flexibility. By leveraging collaborative, community-driven research, we can yield innovative and impactful outcomes aligned with these goals. In this talk, I will highlight several projects spanning mobile tactile displays and soft robotic actuators. Specifically, I will touch upon a 3-DoF wrist-worn haptic device for guidance and communication, a smartphone app used to democratize haptics research, and a versatile soft pneumatic actuator with reconfigurable fiber configurations. Moreover, I will demonstrate how technical expertise derived from research in the lab was coupled with the broader community to propel new research avenues. Making a conscious effort to uncover synergies between community and robotics research provides invaluable opportunities to benefit agriculture, human health, and everyday technology.