Soft Material Transducers

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, soft materials have shown an impressive development with remarkable applications in soft robots and wearable systems. They need reliable sensing and actuation mechanisms In order to act as smoothly as biological systems.  In particular, such systems require soft tactile sensing and proprioceptive actuation for achieving safe interaction with the environment and/or the human body. However, the development of soft material transducers still present several challenges, in particular regarding: design and modelling, fabrication techniques, integration of sensing and actuation, low computational signal processing, smooth control.

To meet these challenges, novel solutions for deformable materials, composites and structures, fabrication techniques, soft system design and control are investigated. In particular, for soft tactile sensors and proprioceptive actuators, a variety of soft material and transducer mechanisms are available, but there is still a gap to exploit effectively them in soft robots and wearable systems for real-world applications.

This Special Issue solicits papers that cover recent developments, demonstrations, and applications for soft material transducers and the enabling design methods and technologies. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Soft tactile sensing
• Soft wearable sensing
• Soft sensorized robots
• Modeling of soft sensors, actuators and wearables
• System integration of soft sensors and actuators
• Soft smart materials coupling sensing and actuation
• Bioinspired soft sensing and actuation
• Proprioception and/or exteroception of soft robots
• Proprioceptive soft actuators
• Control of soft systems
• Data processing techniques for soft systems
• 2D and 3D fabrication technologies of soft systems

Dr. Massimo Totaro
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• soft tactile sensors
• soft wearable systems
• soft robotics
• bioinspired soft systems
• proprioceptive actuators