From a functional standpoint, classic robots are not at all similar to biological systems. If compared with rigid robots, animals’ bodies look overly redundant, imprecise, and weak. Nevertheless, animals can still perform a vast range of activities with unmatched effectiveness. Many studies in biomechanics have pointed to the elastic and compliant nature of the musculoskeletal system as a fundamental ingredient explaining this gap. Thus, to reach performance comparable to nature, elastic elements have been introduced in rigid-bodied robots, leading to articulated soft robotics [1] (see “Summary”). In continuum soft robotics, this concept is brought to an extreme. Here, softness is not concentrated at the joint level but instead distributed across the whole structure. As a result, soft robots (henceforth, omitting the adjective continuum) are entirely made of continuously deformable elements. This design solution aims to bring robots closer to invertebrate animals and the soft appendices of vertebrate animals (for example, an elephant’s trunk and the tail of a monkey). Several soft robotic hardware platforms have been proposed with increasingly higher reliability and functionalities. In this process, considerable attention has been devoted to the technological side of the problem, leading to a large assortment of hardware solutions. In turn, this abundance opened up the challenge of developing effective control strategies that can manage the soft body and exploit its embodied intelligence.

中文翻译：

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基于模型的软机器人控制：最新技术和开放挑战的调查


从功能的角度来看，经典机器人与生物系统完全不同。如果与刚性机器人相比，动物的身体显得过于冗余、不精确、脆弱。尽管如此，动物仍然可以以无与伦比的效率进行广泛的活动。许多生物力学研究指出，肌肉骨骼系统的弹性和顺应性是解释这一差距的基本因素。因此，为了达到与自然相媲美的性能，在刚体机器人中引入了弹性元件，从而产生了铰接式软机器人[1]（参见“摘要”）。在连续软体机器人中，这一概念被发挥到了极致。在这里，柔软度并不集中在关节层面，而是分布在整个结构上。因此，软机器人（此后省略形容词连续体）完全由连续变形的元素组成。该设计方案旨在让机器人更接近无脊椎动物和脊椎动物的柔软附肢（例如大象的鼻子和猴子的尾巴）。已经提出了几种具有越来越高的可靠性和功能的软机器人硬件平台。在此过程中，人们对问题的技术方面给予了相当多的关注，从而产生了各种各样的硬件解决方案。反过来，这种丰富性也带来了开发有效控制策略的挑战，这些策略可以管理软体并利​​用其内在智能。