Towards Reproducibility in Soft Robotics

Addressing Concerns in Manufacturing, Testing, and Simulation

Half-day Workshop @ IEEE RAS RoboSoft 2026

Kanazawa, Japan

Co-organised with the IEEE Working Group on Reproducibility in Soft Robotics

📍 Venue: TBD　(Kanazawa Institute of Technology)    |    📅 Date: April 11 (Afternoon Session)

Abstract

As soft robotics matures, reproducibility has become critical for comparing results, building trust in reporting, and enabling real-world deployment. Achieving reproducibility remains challenging due to deformable materials, modeling complexity, and diverse requirements across manufacturing, testing, and simulation.

This workshop addresses reproducibility across the complete development pipeline. Expert talks and interactive sessions examine fabrication variability, testing protocols, simulation accuracy, and sim-to-real transfer, with hands-on and audience-driven components.

Topics of Interest

  • Reproducibility across manufacturing, testing, and simulation
  • Material characterization and fabrication reporting
  • Experimental design and evaluation protocols
  • Simulation and validation of soft robots
  • Datasets, benchmarks, and data provenance

Invited Speakers

Sukjun Kim

UCSD

Nana Obayashi

NYU

Kait Becker

MIT

Perla Maiolino

Oxford

Andrea Cherubini

École Centrale de Nantes

Manuel Mekkattu

ETH Zürich

Florian T. Pokorny

KTH

Cosimo Della Santina

TU Delft

Tentative Program

Local Time (UTC+9)SessionTopic
01:45 PMIntroduction
02:00 PMInteractive Reproducibility ActivityHands-on
02:40 PM - 03:20 PMSukjun KimMedical Field
Nana ObayashiField environments
Kait BeckerManufacturing
Perla MaiolinoSensing
03:20 PMCoffee Break & Poster Session
03:50 PMCase Study and Discussion
04:10 PM - 05:30 PMAndrea CherubiniSimulation and Experimental Challenges of Vision-based Soft Object Manipulation
Manuel MekkattuReproducibility Across the Soft Robotics Pipeline: Datasets, Simulators, and Benchmarks
Florian T. PokornyScalable Real-World Benchmarking for Deformable Object Manipulation
Cosimo Della SantinaTBA
05:30 PMWrap-up & Photo

Call for Posters

We invite poster submissions related to reproducibility in soft robotics, including challenges, case studies, tools, datasets, and methodologies across manufacturing, testing, and simulation. Submissions should be provided as a 2-page abstract describing the technical contribution, its context, and relevance to reproducible research. All submissions will undergo a peer-review process and will be evaluated based on technical quality, clarity, relevance to the workshop theme, and their potential to stimulate discussion. Submissions must be prepared using the standard IEEE two-column format (US letter size). LaTeX and MS Word templates can be found on the IEEE RAS paper submission support page .

The submission and review process will be managed via OpenReview. All accepted contributions will be presented in person during the interactive poster sessions and discussion periods within the workshop.

Submit via OpenReview

Submission information:

  • Format: 2-page abstract
  • Submission deadline: March 15, 2026 GMT (UTC-0)
  • Notification of acceptance: March 20, 2026

Organizers

Ricardo Rosales

Ritsumeikan University, Japan

David Howard

CSIRO

Hannibal Paul

Ritsumeikan University, Japan

Laura Blumenschein

Purdue University

Hongying Zhang

National University of Singapore

Zhongkui Wang

Ritsumeikan University, Japan

Ethan DeVries

Purdue University

Additional assistance in organization is being provided by the Co-Chairs of the IEEE RAS Working Group on Reproducibility in Soft Robotics: Woongbae Kim, Robert MacCurdy and Gina Olson.

Contact

Ricardo Rosales - jrosalesfc.ritsumei.ac.jp

IEEE RoboSoft 2026 · Workshop on Reproducibility in Soft Robotics