The present invention provides a method and apparatus for sensing and determining the shapes of deformable materials, shaped by a plurality of actuators, using sparse sensor network topologies. The method comprises placing a plurality of curvature sensors on the surface of a deformable material to measure the local curvatures of the deformable material. The plurality of curvature sensors generate a collection of sensor data correlated to the local curvatures. Actuator parameters are generated from sensor data by assuming linear approximation between sensors data and actuator parameters. The shape of the deformable material is determined from the generated actuator parameters.