Soft Robots at King’s CoRe

The Centre for Robotics Research (CoRe) at King’s College London is developing technology for “soft robots”. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Taking inspiration from the natural world, these robots have soft exteriors that make them safer and more adept for collaboration with humans. Al Jazeera visited King’s CoRe to report on the latest developments…

STIFF-FLOP in the News

Taking inspiration from the realm of soft-bodied animals, a European-wide team of engineers, biologists and surgeons coordinated by roboticists at King’s College London have made new ground in the framework of EU project STIFF-FLOP (STIFFness controllable Flexible and Learnable manipulator for surgical OPerations) creating soft and stiffness-controllable robotic devices specifically for minimally-invasive surgery. Here, a…

Service Robots – Flexible Helpers in Professional Use at CoRe

Service robotics in Europe is on the rise. The market entrance of Google, the establishment of the “Robo-Stox” index in 2013, special reports in magazines such as “The Economist” or “Der Spiegel” show it: service robotics is on the threshold of entering a new maturity level. Service robotics conquers new, commercial fields of application and…

East London Science School visit CoRe labs

We were very excited to show how we do robotics experiments and how we make simple robots to students from the East London Science School. Hope their determination to lead scientific careers further solidified. It was very encouraging to see the depth of their questions. One child asked – “how do you get ideas to…

The 2015 Innovative Surgical Robotics Forum – 18 March 2015

This event is for any healthcare professional, academic or company interested in discussing the challenges, current barriers and ways to move forward in the arena of surgical robots. The global market for medical robotics and computer-assisted surgical (MRCAS) equipment was worth nearly $2.7 billion in 2013. The market is projected to approach $3.3 billion in…

ICRA 2014 Workshop on Soft and Stiffness-controllable Robots for MIS

This workshop aims to bring together medical experts active in the field of minimally invasive surgery and roboticists creating and studying soft and stiffness controllable robot devices. We will explore the synergies that will arise from robotic surgeons cooperating with such modern robots to conduct advanced surgical interventions previously not possible. This ICRA 2014 workshop…

Huge Media Interest: Why octopus arms don’t stick together?

“Octopus arms have a built-in mechanism that prevents the suckers from grabbing octopus skin,” says Guy Levy (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), the lead author of the work, which appears today in Current Biology. Their article has received a huge interest from the media such as Nature, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, IBT, The Scientist, National…

STIFF-FLOP Newsletter out now!

The STIFF-FLOP consortium has now published their end-of-year newsletter which is available here. It contains the latest news items about: recent progress and achievements of the project; RoNeX – the commercialised integration platform hardware; first safety and benchmarking tests; a list of peer-reviewed papers and invited keynote speeches; STIFF-FLOP exhibitions; Advisory groups.

Professor Althoefer presents overview of octopus inspired robotic arm to members of European and UK Parliaments

During the meeting “EU support for King’s Research”, organised by Professor of Oral Immunology at King’s Charles Kelly, Professor Kaspar Althoefer (Centre for Robotics Research (CoRe), Department of Informatics) presented research currently conducted at King’s as part of EU-funded project STIFF-FLOP to Baroness Sarah Ludford (MEP for London), Simon Hughes (MP for Bermondsey and Old…