Hari Prakash received the Best Early Career Researcher Presentation Award at Emerging Topics in Artificial Intelligence (ETAI) 2025 held in San Diego, from 3 to 7 August 2025.
The award, which includes a certificate, a cash prize of $300, and a T-shirt, is presented by the organisers of the conference in collaboration with SPIE Optics + Photonics.
Hari was awarded the prize for his presentation titled “Inchworm-Inspired Soft Robot with Groove-Guided Locomotion”. Below is the full abstract of her presentation:
Soft robots require directional control to navigate complex terrains. However, achieving such control often requires multiple actuators, which increases mechanical complexity, complicates control systems, and raises energy consumption. Here, we introduce an inchworm-inspired soft robot whose locomotion direction is controlled passively by patterned substrates. The robot employs a single rolled dielectric elastomer actuator, while groove patterns on a 3D-printed substrate guide its alignment and trajectory. Through systematic experiments, we demonstrate that varying groove angles enables precise control of locomotion direction without the need for complex actuation strategies. This groove-guided approach reduces energy consumption, simplifies robot design, and expands the applicability of bio-inspired soft robots in fields such as search and rescue, pipe inspection, and planetary exploration.