Actuators for Robotics
A section of Actuators (ISSN 2076-0825).
Section Information
The Actuators for Robotics Section provides a wide and multidisciplinary vision on cutting-edge approaches, new methods, and advanced technologies to induce robot motion. Topics cover all levels of the development and scale of actuators, from transduction principles/phenomena (including constitutive equations) to advances in material/chemical aspects to enhance transduction and more complex actuation concepts to better exploit the transduction principle. Hardware of interest includes effectors, but also transducers integrated with efficient energy sources (autonomous effectors), with motion converters (motors), or both (autonomous motors). Actuation technologies of any kind are welcome, from more traditional technologies, such as those of an electromechanical, electromagnetic, and hydraulic/pneumatic nature, to innovative technologies based on piezoelectricity, shape memory materials, flexible fluidic actuators, electro-active polymers and supercoiled polymers (active), and electro-magnetorheological fluids/elastomers, jamming transition, and low-melting-point materials (semiactive). On the software side, topics of interest include novel control algorithms applied to actuators and actuation/motion control systems that are expected to improve robot abilities, from manual control and wireless to semiautonomous and fully autonomous approaches, including artificial intelligence, such as machine learning methods (deep learning, clustering, Bayesian methods, reinforcement learning, and genetic algorithms).
The audience of Actuators for Robotics is interested in all aspects of actuators, with implications for the robotic systems that they are integrated into, from components to complete systems and platforms deployed on real scenarios. Preference will be given to studies with solid and rigorous experimental validation on hardware.
Other areas covered by the Section include the following:
- Advanced design approaches and tools for modeling, including numerical approaches, bioinspiration/biomimetics, and embodied intelligence.
- Manufacturing and assembly techniques at all scales, especially those with a limited number of manual phases.
- Sustainability, recyclability, reusability, and disassembly.
- Benchmarking, test protocols, and standards.
Editorial Board
Special Issues
Following special issues within this section are currently open for submissions:
- Rehabilitation Robots and Assistive Devices: A Special Issue in Honor of Prof. Dr. Rory A. Cooper (Deadline: 31 March 2024)
- Soft Actuators for Medical Robotics (Deadline: 30 April 2024)
- Design and Control of Agricultural Robotics (Deadline: 31 May 2024)
- Recent Advances in Soft Actuators, Robotics and Intelligence (Deadline: 31 May 2024)
- Advancement in the Design and Control of Robotic Grippers (Deadline: 31 May 2024)
- Soft Actuators and Robotics—2nd Edition (Deadline: 30 June 2024)
- Soft Robotics: Actuation, Control, and Application (Deadline: 31 July 2024)
- Modeling, Perception and Control of Robotic Systems with Real-World Applications (Deadline: 31 July 2024)
- Modelling and Motion Control of Soft Robots (Deadline: 1 August 2024)
- Advanced Robots: Design, Control and Application—2nd Edition (Deadline: 10 August 2024)
- Soft Robotics in Biomedical Application (Deadline: 31 August 2024)
- Control of Hydraulic Robotic Manipulators (Deadline: 31 August 2024)
- Actuators in Robotic Control: Volume II (Deadline: 30 September 2024)
- Bio-Inspired Soft Robotics (Deadline: 31 October 2024)
- Advanced Technologies in Soft Actuators (Deadline: 31 October 2024)