Ryo Kanno
Soft Actuator Design & Sustainable Robotics
PhD Candidate · Laboratory of Sustainability Robotics, Empa & EPFL
I design and fabricate soft actuators and underwater robots for next generation human-interface and structural inspection. The developed soft actuators are based on air, hydraulic, and electrostatic artifitial muscles. These muscles are fabricated by molding or 3d printing. As a Ph.D project, I focus on magnetically driven high-power underwater soft robots. My expertise spans soft material engineering, rapid prototyping, and actuation system design. It bridges fundamental actuation / sensing research with real-world robotic applications.
Expertise
Soft Actuators
Mckibben actuators, HASEL actuators, Ionic polymer actuators, IPMC, electroactive polymers, dielectric elastomers
3D Printing & Fabrication
Multi-material printing, biodegradable & biocompatible materials, rapid prototyping
Underwater Robotics
Magnetically driven propulsion, high-power soft robots, aquatic locomotion for infrastructure inspection
Tools & Methods
Python, MATLAB, FEA simulation, mechanical property testing, electrochemical characterization, SEM/optical imaging
Recent
- Nov 2025 Attended Swiss Robotics Day in Lausanne, Switzerland.
- Apr 2025 Paper selected as Spotlight Paper at RoboSoft 2025, 8th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Soft Robotics.
- Feb 2025 Paper selected as cover of Advanced Sustainable Systems.
- Nov 2024 New paper published in Advanced Sustainable Systems.
- Apr 2024 Paper selected as Best Paper Finalist — Excellence in Manufacturing Reproducibility at RoboSoft 2024, 7th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Soft Robotics..