This award supports research to create a proof-of-concept robotic factory for the automated design, fabrication, and testing of novel soft actuators, powered by pressurized air. Such actuators are important for food handling, wearable devices, surgical tools, and other applications requiring the safe manipulation of easily damaged items. The robotic factory can print an actuator from multiple polymer feedstocks covering a wide range of mechanical properties, in order to custom tailor the component to the needs of the user. Combining multiple materials to achieve a desired result is a challenging process even for human experts, made more difficult when producing novel parts for one-off tasks. Therefore the robotic factory embeds an intelligent design capability, using high-fidelity simulations to test and evolve millions of possible solutions. Even the best simulations depend on accurate knowledge of physical parameters. Therefore, after a part is manufactured, the robotic factory will test it against the simulator predictions. If the performance is acceptable, the part is used. Otherwise the simulator is recalibrated and the process repeats. With each cycle, the algorithm can explore an increasingly rich design space. To extend the number of iterations that can be performed without human intervention, failed parts are recycled and the material reused. The robotic factory draws on previous results to continually improve the parts it makes. Future generations of robotic factori