Chateando con la Ciencia: Carlos Sánchez Somolinos
“Soft robots, living materials: Programming movement through 3D printing”
As part of the 10th “Chateando con la Ciencia” Lecture Series, organised by the Real Zaragoza Tennis Club in collaboration with the Institute of Nanoscience and Materials of Aragon (INMA), we invite you to a fascinating session on the future of robotics.
About the talk: Soft robotics proposes a paradigm shift, moving away from rigid structures to create flexible, safe, and adaptive systems inspired by living organisms. During the session, we will explore how the integration of smart materials, such as liquid crystal elastomers, allows the material itself to act as both a sensor and an actuator. Innovative 3D and 4D printing strategies developed at the Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory (AML) to programme movement during fabrication will be presented, achieving biomimetic robots that respond to light and magnetic fields and demonstrate basic levels of autonomy.
The speaker: The lecture will be delivered by Carlos Sánchez-Somolinos, a CSIC Research Professor at INMA. With a distinguished career in the development of functional polymer systems, he has led European excellence projects such as PRIME and STORM-BOTS, and is the co-founder of technological spin-off companies.
Event details:
- Date: Thursday, 12h March 2026.
- Time: 19:00.
- Format: Video-conference limited to 100 participants.
- Registration: To attend, it is necessary to request an access code by emailing palacio@unizar.es before 14 January.
This new generation of robots seeks to shift control from external motors to the material itself, integrating form and function in a manner similar to that found in nature.
Analogy to understand soft robotics: One might imagine that conventional robotics is like a knight in rigid armourwho requires motors in his joints to move, whereas soft robotics is more like an octopus: its own body is flexible and sensitive, allowing it to adapt and react to its environment fluidly without the need for external mechanical parts.
