Collaborative research: evofab - a fully automated robotic factory that designs, builds, and tests soft actuators

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation awarded $306,200 to Trustees of Union College on June 15, 2025, under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) to develop EVOFAB, an autonomous robotic factory for the design, fabrication, and testing of soft pneumatic actuators. The project, which extends through May 31, 2029, delivers a proof-of-concept system that integrates evolutionary algorithms with automated manufacturing and in-situ characterization to autonomously design and produce soft actuators from multiple polymer feedstocks. These actuators have applications in food handling, wearable devices, surgical instruments, and other operations requiring the safe handling of delicate or easily damaged materials.

The EVOFAB system represents an innovative manufacturing approach that combines high-fidelity simulation with closed-loop optimization. The robotic factory designs candidate actuators using computational simulations, manufactures prototypes through multi-material 3D printing, and validates performance through automated testing. Failed components are recycled to extend autonomous operation cycles, and simulator parameters are continuously recalibrated based on empirical testing results to progressively improve design accuracy. This iterative process enables exploration of increasingly complex design spaces without human intervention, with future applications extending to fully functional soft robotic systems.

Abstract

This award supports research to create a proof-of-concept robotic factory for the automated design, fabrication, and testing of novel soft actuators, powered by pressurized air. Such actuators are important for food handling, wearable devices, surgical tools, and other applications requiring the safe manipulation of easily damaged items. The robotic factory can print an actuator from multiple polymer feedstocks covering a wide range of mechanical properties, in order to custom tailor the component to the needs of the user. Combining multiple materials to achieve a desired result is a challenging process even for human experts, made more difficult when producing novel parts for one-off tasks. Therefore the robotic factory embeds an intelligent design capability, using high-fidelity simulations to test and evolve millions of possible solutions. Even the best simulations depend on accurate knowledge of physical parameters. Therefore, after a part is manufactured, the robotic factory will test IT against the simulator predictions. If the performance is acceptable, the part is used. Otherwise the simulator is recalibrated and the process repeats. With each cycle, the algorithm can explore an increasingly rich design space. To extend the number of iterations that can be performed without human intervention, failed parts are recycled and the material reused. The robotic factory draws on previous results to continually improve the parts IT makes. Future generations of robotic factories will produce increasingly complex devices, up to and including fully functional soft robots. This project seeks to transform the design and discovery of novel soft components and devices. The system, called evofab, is an autonomous robotic factory that combines innovative evolutionary algorithms with fully automated fabrication and in-situ characterization to design, manufacture, and test pneumatically powered soft components. Evofab designs and simulates parts, which are then 3D printed, probed, and placed in a pneumatic test fixture, all without human intervention. Material from failed parts is recovered in an integrated recycling process. This collaborative project has five innovative threads: (1) a fabrication-aware evolutionary design system that rapidly and efficiently searches a design space for responsive configurations; (2) simulations of designs that minimize differences between numerical predictions and real behaviors; (3) an automated fabrication pipeline that prints and (4) characterizes those designs; and (5) an integrated recycling process that maximizes untended operation. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are not planned for this award.