Inflatable robot arm piece, ca. 2010

The materials in this series are products of Atkeson’s research in soft robotics. The soft robot arm and continuum robot arm were developed with the hope of improving human-robot interaction, as a softer robot would pose less of a safety risk to a human being it was programmed to assist. Both the soft arm and continuum robot arm were part of the thesis work done by Siddharth Sanan, one of Atkeson's students. The soft robot arm is of particular note, since it served as the inspiration for the design of the character “Baymax” in the Disney movie Big Hero 6, after the director visited Carnegie Mellon looking for inspiration.