Thought LeadersAndrew Spielberg and Alexander AminiRobotics Researchers Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)Massachusetts Institute of Technology Soft robot development could benefit from an algorithm that optimizes sensor placement allowing such machines to better ‘understand’ their environments. Ph.D. students in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Alexander Amini and Andrew Spielberg, have developed an algorithm to assist engineers with sensor placement to optimize soft robotics designs. Can you give our readers a summary of your recent research? Our research focuses on soft robots, a new " breed" of robots of growing interest in the robotics community. Rigid robots have a rigid skeleton with discrete joints. By contrast, soft robots are flexible throughout their body, and typically do not have a joint structure. While rigid robots can be modeled quite compactly - you simply need to know the state of all of the joints of the robot to reconstruct its pose - soft robots can bend in a multitude of different ways.