The development of robotic interaction is becoming an increasing topic. The excellent grasp ability of low safety and fragile objects will greatly solve the complex labour of people. Rigid actuation have made significant progress for manufacturing and automation assembly, but it lacks of excellent interaction ability for humans and unstructured environments. Soft manipulator is the basic part of man-machine safety cooperation, which can make up for the deficiency. This paper describes the current research status of soft manipulator, driving methods, structures of soft manipulator and principles. Then, we specially show the joint fluid-elastic pneumatic drive, which enables control bending of different joints of the fingers. A detailed classification and principle description of intelligent materials is made for the flexible hands application. In addition, the principle of two new driving modes: biological driving and gas-liquid driving are presented. The performance of different driving modes is compared in detail, and the advantages and disadvantages of different pneumatic driving modes are listed. Finally, we make some prediction for the application prospect of soft manipulator in the future. The practical application and key problems of soft manipulator are summarised endly.

机器人交互的发展正成为越来越多的话题。低安全性和易碎物品的出色抓握能力将极大地解决人们的繁琐工作。刚性驱动在制造和自动化装配方面取得了重大进展，但缺乏对人和非结构化环境的出色交互能力。软机械手是人机安全合作的基础部分，可以弥补这一不足。本文介绍了软操纵器的研究现状，驱动方法，软操纵器的结构和原理。然后，我们特别展示了关节流体弹性气动驱动器，它可以控制手指不同关节的弯曲。针对智能手的应用，对智能材料进行了详细的分类和原理描述。另外，提出了两种新的驱动方式的原理：生物驱动和气液驱动。详细比较了不同驾驶模式的性能，并列出了不同气动驾驶模式的优缺点。最后，对软操纵器在未来的应用前景进行了预测。最后总结了软操纵器的实际应用和关键问题。