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About

Chidanand Hegde is a leading researcher in soft robotics, with a focus on integrating advanced sensing, additive manufacturing, and automation for delicate manipulation tasks. His work bridges the gap between material science and practical robotics, particularly in food handling and vertical farming. Hegde’s most cited paper, “Sensing in Soft Robotics” (2023, 311 citations), provides a foundational overview of how soft robots achieve human-like dexterity through embedded sensors. He has pioneered the use of 3D printing to fabricate soft robotic components, as seen in his 2025 paper on additive manufacturing (27 citations) and his 2024 work on a 3D-printed mechano-optic force sensor (11 citations), which uses programmable metamaterials for high-sensitivity force detection. Hegde also contributed to the RoboSoft Manipulation Challenge with a vacuum-actuated hybrid soft gripper (6 citations), demonstrating real-world dexterity. Notably, he developed a detachable FBG-based contact force sensor (4 citations) to capture gripper-vegetable interactions, addressing labor shortages in vertical farming. With a growing citation record and a focus on scalable, sensor-rich soft robots, Hegde is shaping the future of adaptive automation in agriculture and beyond.