BioMeld at BioRob2024

The 10th edition of the IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and
Biomechatronics (BioRob2024) was held from 1st to 4th of September in Heidelberg, Germany. BioRob is a collaborative effort between two #IEEE Societies: Robotics and Automation (RAS) and Engineering in Medicine and Biology (EMBS). This year’s Conference explored the theoretical and practical challenges stemming from the integration of robotics and mechatronics into medicine and biology. The main objective of Biorobotics is to assess biological systems from a ‘biomechatronic’ perspective and untangle the scientific and engineering principles behind their remarkable performance. This profound understanding of how a biological system functions, behaves, and interacts can guide the design and creation of advanced bio-inspired machinery and systems and promote the development of cutting-edge nano-, micro-, and macro-devices that can assist or even replace humans in disease diagnostics and prevention, surgery, prosthetics, rehabilitation, and personal assistance.

Leonardo Ricotti from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna was on the Organizing committee of the Conference as one of the program chairs. During the first day of the Conference (1 Sept), our team took part in a full-day workshop titled Bioinspired and Biohybrid Soft Robots: advanced materials and enabling technologies. Lorenzo Vannozzi, also from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, was one of the organizers of this Workshop, which touched on several topics within the biohybrid robotic field, such as the use of biomaterials and
biofabrication strategies, and the need for enabling technologies to improve the performance of such devices.

Participating as speakers during the half-day morning session were our Project Coordinator Igor Balaž from UNSPF, Stefano Lai from UniCA, and Antisthenis Tsompanas from Uwe Bristol. Each of them addressed a different aspect of biorobotics.

Igor Balaž gave a talk on Computational Tools in Designing Biohybrid Robots. The field of biohybrid soft robotics is rapidly evolving and it raises unique challenges and opportunities. Igor’s presentation explored whether it is possible to develop a unified framework for such a diverse discipline. Drawing parallels with traditional robotics, he examined to what extent lessons in modularity, robust design, and control systems can be applied to biohybrid systems. Igor highlighted insights from biology and AI and their contributions to creating adaptive, resilient, and intelligent biohybrid robots. Finally, he emphasized the need for novel AI algorithms and the potential for new standards to guide the future of this field.

Stefano Lai conducted a session on Applications of Organic Electronics in Soft Robotics. Controllability of biohybrid machines is a major challenge for its effective
exploitation in real application scenario. Flexible Organic Electronics (FOE) is potentially suitable to this task, owing to its peculiar mechanical properties and
fabrication processes, but barely explored yet. Stefano discussed the first application of Organic Thin-Film Transistor (OTFT) to biohybrid machine application scenarios, including the transduction of the movement of 3D-bioengineered muscle tissues under different electrical and chemical conditions, and the transfer of the OTFT technology to ultra-flexible substrates by inkjet printed, suitable for lamination of common materials typically employed in soft robotics applications. These results pave the way to successful exploitation of FOE in soft robotics.

Antisthenis Tsompanas led a discussion on the Evolutionary Optimization of Soft Robots. The designing process of soft robots and the more specialised biohybrid machines is a complicated problem that greatly depends on the application under study. Anti’s presentation focused on the automated designing process of these machines utilizing evolutionary algorithms and indirect representations, such as Compositional Pattern-Producing Networks. He demonstrated the development of the problem description in the simulated sandbox used for in silico evolutionary optimization. He continued his talk by discussing the enhancement of this process, taking into consideration more appropriate initialization procedures for the evolutionary algorithms and decentralization of the computational tasks to further accelerate the whole procedure.

The engagement was exceptional, with the audience actively contributing to the discussion and staying fully immersed in speakers’ presentations.

We want to extend our thanks to everyone who participated in this Workshop

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