Papers
37
Total Citations
1,069
H-Index
15
About
Emanuela Del Dottore is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of soft robotics, bio-inspired design, and growing robotic systems. Her work draws deeply from nature — particularly plants and cephalopods — to engineer adaptive, flexible robots capable of navigating complex, unstructured environments. She is perhaps best known for her foundational contributions to the emerging field of growing robots, having co-authored one of the first formal definitions of the concept in 2018 (63 citations), and advancing it significantly with a self-growing, plant-inspired robot capable of autonomous 3D navigation (75 citations). Her octopus-inspired soft arm with suction cups (130 citations) stands as her most celebrated work, demonstrating how biological morphology can dramatically enhance robotic grasping in confined spaces. Del Dottore has also made lasting contributions to continuum manipulator design through the SIMBA platform (77 citations) and explored how plant root behaviors — from circumnutations to tropisms — can inform efficient soil penetration and obstacle avoidance strategies. Her inclusion in the influential 2022 Soft Robotics Roadmap (105 citations) reflects her standing within the broader research community. Collectively, her portfolio reveals a researcher with a rare ability to translate biological principles into transformative engineering solutions.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2
- 3A plant-inspired robot with soft differential bending capabilities82 citations · 2016
- 4SIMBA: Tendon-Driven Modular Continuum Arm with Soft Reconfigurable Gripper77 citations · 2017
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10