The RoboPhysics Laboratory student team took first place at the IEEE RoboSoft 2026 competition in Kanazawa, Japan, competing against university teams from across the international soft-robotics community.
The winning entry was a manipulation system built on technologies developed in the lab: fluidic actuators driven by electro-active fluids, paired with electroadhesive gripping surfaces. The system had to grasp, move and release objects of very different shape, weight and fragility — the kind of task where rigid grippers force a trade-off between force and delicacy.
The team was led on the technical side by Angelo Catalano and included MSc students Elisabetta Annese, Luca Mitaritonna and Giuseppe Macchia, each of whom brought a thesis strand into the build: soft manipulation, electroadhesive grippers and fluidic-actuator control.