Aerial Soft Robotics
Organizers and Lecturers
Chiara Gabellieri, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Robotics and Mechatronics Lab, EEMCS Faculty, University of Twente
Giulia Michieletto, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Management and Engineering and Department of Information Engineering, University of Padua
Antonio Rapuano
Research Engineer, Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome
Jiawei Xu, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Intelligent Robotics and Autonomy Lab (iRaL),
Aerospace Engineering, University of Michigan
Summary
From Leonardo da Vinci’s studies of bird flight and flying automata, embodying humanity’s timeless curiosity to mimic nature’s grace, today, aerial soft robotics (ASR) realizes the dream of compliant, adaptable machines that soar and serve us. The human intellect animates robots that blend soft materials with UAV mobility, conquering compliant interaction through soft bodies [1], continuum appendages[2-4] , compliant peripherals [5], morphing structures [6], and tactile sensors [7].
This half-day workshop brings together leading researchers to discuss recent advances in design, modeling, and control of aerial systems featuring deformable designs, morphing and perching mechanisms, and novel aerial manipulation strategies — ranging from handling deformable objects to grasping with soft end-effectors. The workshop features invited talks from a diverse panel of experts.
Aerial soft robotics combines soft robotics with UAV mobility to overcome limitations of rigid aerial systems in collision resilience and adaptability to unstructured environments [8]. Recent advances show ASR moving from prototypes toward field-ready applications [9], [10]. Growth in UAV deployment, particularly in inspection, environmental monitoring, and search-and-rescue, underscores the demand for safer, more flexible aerial systems [11], [12]. This workshop will gather experts on soft robotics, aerial systems, and bio-inspired design to consolidate ASR as a research frontier, fostering collaborations and multidisciplinary exchange, and also reflections on the future of soft aerial robotics.
ASR represents a distinctive focus compared to conventional UAV or ground soft robotics by addressing the unique trade-offs of compliant aerial systems in terms of weight, dexterity, and real- time controllability [13]. Its interdisciplinary scope integrates materials, compliant mechanics, control theory, and bio-inspiration.
Workshop Objectives
The goal of the workshop is to explore what the community identifies as key use cases and application domains for soft aerial robots. While rigid UAVs already have well‑established design categories, soft designs remain in a rich and diverse exploratory phase. We will therefore speculate on which design concepts researchers consider most promising and how these relate to specific applications, as well as examine how soft aerial robots complement rigid UAVs.
The event will also broaden the conversation to modeling and control strategies, investigating whether classical approaches, AI‑driven methods, or hybrid solutions are emerging as preferred techniques within the field. The workshop format will ensure diversity and engagement through a poster session, invited talks, and real-time panel discussions, enabling participants to exchange ideas across disciplines and initiate new collaborations.
Key Topics
The invited talks span complementary directions in aerial soft robotics, from bioinspired design and morphing platforms to cooperative manipulation of deformable materials and dexterous aerial interaction.
- Kostas Alexis (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) will present the talk entitled “Going There You Don’t Fit: Softness and Squeezability in Aerial Robots.” The presentation will discuss how structural compliance, deformable frames, and squeezable morphologies enable aerial robots to access confined and cluttered environments that are inaccessible to conventional rigid UAVs.
- Antonio Franchi (University of Twente) will present “Long Linear Deformable Objects Controlled from Air for Pick and Place and Cable Deployment.” The talk will introduce strategies for aerial manipulation of flexible objects, focusing on modeling of coupled aerial robot-object dynamics and real-time control approaches.
- Peng Lu (The University of Hong Kong) will pres ent “Towards Dexterous Aerial Manipulation in Complex Environments.” The talk will explore system architectures and control frameworks that enable aerial robots to perform contact-rich and dexterous manipulation tasks.
- Aníbal Ollero (University of Seville) will deliver “Expanding the Capabilities of Aerial Robots Through Soft Morphing Technologies.” The talk will focus on morphing aerial platforms and soft appendages that enhance adaptability, manipulation capability, and interaction safety.
- David Saldaña (Lehigh University) will discuss aerial manipulation of deformable materials using teams of aerial robots. His talk will address modeling, planning, and control strategies for manipulating cables, bendable rods, and nets, highlighting the challenges of coordinated transport and adaptive manipulation of highly flexible objects in outdoor and unstructured environments.
- Sophie Armanini (Imperial College London) will deliver “Bioinspired Soft Aerial Robots.” Her presentation will examine biologically inspired soft structures and compliant mechanisms for aerial systems, discussing how insights from flying organisms can inform lightweight, adaptive, and resilient robot designs. Together, these talks provide a coherent overview of the state of the art in aerial soft robotics, covering compliant platform design, morphing technologies, cooperative manipulation of deformable objects, and dexterous aerial interaction.
Workshop Format
High-quality content will be ensured through a combination of invited talks from leading researchers and practitioners and peer-reviewed extended abstracts evaluated by at least 2 organizers each on technical soundness, clarity, and relevance to ASR themes. Priority will be given to submissions with validated results and innovative approaches that go beyond incremental contributions. The tentative schedule of the workshop is in Table 1. The half-day workshop will include:
- Six confirmed invited talks, including one remotely confirmed (20 min + 5 min Q\&A) by experts in different fields of ASR. The talks range from aerial robotic manipulation of deformable objects to morphing flying robot designs, targeting industrial and environmental applications.
- Short talks (3 min + 2 min Q\&A) by 4 best extended abstracts, selected by the organizers. This represents an important stage for young researchers.
- A 30-minute poster session where junior researchers have the chance to show their research results to the audience and interact with senior experts, as well. Each poster will correspond to an accepted extended abstract submitted to the workshop and reviewed by 2 organizers independently.
- 30-minute panel discussion where the audience can interact with the speakers on the themes of the workshop. The discussion will be moderated by the organizers and directed towards the workshop goals listed above.
Target Audience
The workshop target practitioners and academics and undergraduate students interested in aerial
soft robotics.
To solicit participation, the call for contributions will be advertised through a dedicated webpage, robotics-worldwide, institutional mailing lists, and international newsletters (e.g., eu-robotics, I-RIM, SIDRA, Weekly Robotics Newsletter, multi-robots RAS-TC). The organizers will promote the event via personal and institutional LinkedIn accounts, university news channels, and professional networks throughout the globe. We will leverage research consortia and project networks (e.g., NWO AVIATOR, Horizon Europe AEROSTREAM and AutoASSESS) to reach academic and industrial stakeholders in aerial robotics and soft robotics. Speakers and authors of accepted contributions will be encouraged to further disseminate the event through their own networks.
Announcements will also be made during relevant courses (e.g., the aerial robotics class at the University of Twente in April 2026, the second-semester classes of Control Systems Engineering – Robotics Path and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Padova) and internal mailing list (e.g., Robotics Center at the University of Twente) to engage enthusiastic undergraduate students and researchers.
The organizers will advertise the workshop at international events such as ICRA 2026. To increase engagement and interaction, speakers will be encouraged to bring hardware prototypes when feasible, which will be displayed during the poster session.
The participation of junior researchers beside senior experts will be encouraged by submissions of abstracts, with oral presentations for a selected group of excellent submissions. The webpage will advertise such an opportunity in advance to encourage abstract submissions further.
Moreover, the workshop proposes a diverse organization committee and speaker panel in terms of seniority, gender, and institution locations. Organizers are two men and two women, from four different countries, in Europe and the US, with roles ranging from assistant professor to post- doctoral researcher and PhD candidate. The speaker panel involves a gender-diverse group from different countries and continents. When selecting the best abstracts to give the authors the chance of a short oral presentation, if two or more abstracts obtain the same score, the one(s) with a corresponding author from an underrepresented group (gender, country of the affiliated institution, etc.) will be selected to promote diversity. This policy will also be advertised in advance on the website to hopefully encourage diverse participation. To foster emerging talents, authors will be asked to indicate whether the submitted work is a student’s extended abstract, where a student was mainly responsible for the research idea and realization. To ensure that junior members are included in the program, at least 2 of the abstracts selected for oral presentation will be by a student.
Tentative Outcome
Following the event, the organizers will coordinate a community-driven effort toward a review article on aerial soft robotics, synthesizing insights and emerging research directions discussed during the workshop, as done by the organizers after a previous event [14].
Schedule
| Start | Description |
| 8:30 | Introduction and overview |
| Session 1: | Invited talks and short talks |
| 8:35 | K. Alexis: Going there you don’t fit: Softness and squeezeability in aerial robotics |
| 9:00 | A. Franchi: Linear Deformable Objects Controlled from Air for Pick and Place Deployment |
| 9:25 | P. Lu: Towards dexterous aerial manipulation in complex environments |
| 9:50 | Four selected short talks from contributed abstracts: 20 minutes |
| 10:10 | Coffee break & Poster Session, 30′ |
| Session 2: | Invited talks and panel discussion |
| 10:40 | D. Saldaña: On aerial manipulation of deformable objects, title TBD |
| 11:05 | S. Armanini: Bioinspired soft aerial robots |
| 11:30 | A. Ollero/B. Arrue/F. Ruiz Vincueria: Expanding the capabilities of aerial robots through soft technologies |
| 11:55 | Panel discussion: 30 minutes |
| Ending | Closing remarks: 5 minutes, end of event: 12:30 |
REFERENCES
[1] P. D. Petris, M. Nissov, and K. Alexis, “Morphy: A compliant and morphologically aware flying robot,” Advanced Intelligent Systems, vol. 7, no. 7, 2025
[2] Y. Shen, A. Franchi, and C. Gabellieri, “Aerial robots carrying flexible cables: Dynamic shape optimal control via spectral method model,” IEEE Trans. on Robotics, vol. 41, pp. 3162–3182, 2025.
[3] R. Peng, Y. Wang, M. Lu, and P. Lu, “A dexterous and compliant aerial continuum manipulator for cluttered and constrained environments,” Nature Communications, vol. 16, January 2025.
[4] J. Xu, L. Gao, R. Fierro, and D. Saldaña, “Airbender: Adaptive transportation of bendable objects using dual uavs,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 2790–2797, 2025.
[5] S. Ubellacker, A. Ray, J. Bern, J. Strader, and L. Carlone, “High-speed aerial grasping using a soft drone with onboard perception,” npj Robotics, 2024.
[6] F. Ruiz, B. Arrue, and A. Ollero, “A novel concept for titan robotic exploration based on soft morphing aerial robots,” 2023, arXiv preprint.
[7] X. Guo, G. He, M. Mousaei, J. Geng, G. Shi, and S. Scherer, “Aerial interaction with tactile sensing,” in 2024IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Yokohama, Japan, May 2024.
[8] P. H. Nguyen, K. Patnaik, S. Mishra, P. Polygerinos, and W. Zhang, “A soft-bodied aerial robot for collision resilience and contact-reactive perching,” Soft Robotics, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 838–851, 2023.
[9] E. Bauer, M. Blochlinger, P. Strauch, A. Raayatsanati, C. Curdin, and R. K. Katzschmann, “An open-source soft robotic platform for autonomous aerial manipulation in the wild,” in 2024 Conference on Robot Learning, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, December 2024.
[10] A. González-Morgado, S. Smits, G. Heredia, A. Ollero, A. Krupa, F. Chaumette, F. Spindler, A. Franchi, and C. Gabellieri, “Multi- robot aerial soft manipulator for floating litter collection,” 2025, arXiv preprint.
[11] P. Höhrová, J. Soviar, and W. Sroka, “Market analysis of drones for civil use,” Scientific Journal on Transport and Logistics, vol. 14, pp. 55–65, 2023.
[12] M. St˛epniak, I. Cheimariotis, C. Lodi, M. Rataj, J. Zawieska, M. Grosso, and A. Marotta, Research and innovation on drones in Europe – An assessment based on the Transport Research and Innovation Monitoring and Information System. EU Publications Office, 2024.
[13] A. Jalali and F. Janabi-Sharifi, “Aerial continuum manipulation: A new platform for compliant aerial manipulation,” Frontiers in Robotics and AI, vol. 9, 2022.
[14] C. A. Dimmig, G. S. K. McGuire, C. Gabellieri, W. Hönig, J. Moore, and M. Kobilarov, “Survey of simulators for aerial robots: An overview and in-depth systematic comparisons [survey],” IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 153–166, 2024.