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Squid-Inspired Powerful Untethered Soft Pumps via Magnetically Induced Phase Transitions. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Qin Jiang,Zhitong Hu,Kefan Wu,Wenjun Wu,Shuo Zhang,Han Ding,Zhigang Wu
Soft robots possess unique deformability and hence result in great adaptability to various unconstructive environments; meanwhile, untethered soft actuation techniques are critical in fully exploiting their potential for practical applications. However, restricted by the material's softness and structural compliance, most untethered actuation systems were incapable of achieving fully soft construction
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Deformation Characteristics of Three-Dimensional Spiral Soft Actuator Driven by Water Hydraulics for Underwater Manipulator. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-22 Songlin Nie,Linfeng Huo,Hui Ji,Shuang Nie,Pengwang Gao,Hanyu Li
The emergence of bionic soft robots has led to an increased demand for bionic soft actuating ends. In this study, a three-dimensional spiral water hydraulic soft actuator (3D-SWHSA), inspired by the winding action of an elephant's trunk, is proposed to provide a more targeted soft actuator catching method. The 3D-SWHSA is composed of multiple bending and twisting units (BATUs), which can produce winding
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Octopus-Inspired Muscular Hydrostats Powered By Twisted and Coiled Artificial Muscles. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-16 Parth Kotak,Sean Maxson,Thilina Weerakkody,Venanzio Cichella,Caterina Lamuta
Traditional robots are characterized by rigid structures, which restrict their range of motion and their application in environments where complex movements and safe human-robot interactions are required. Soft robots inspired by nature and characterized by soft compliant materials have emerged as an exciting alternative in unstructured environments. However, the use of multicomponent actuators with
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Untethered Soft Pneumatic Actuators with Embedded Multiple Sensing Capabilities. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-10 Xingmiao Fang,Kun Wei,Runhuai Yang
Pneumatic soft robot attracts extensive attention because of its own characteristics. It has great application potential in medical and other fields. Although the recent improvement of the soft robot shows great potentials for delicate manipulations, the development of completely untethered pneumatic intelligent soft robots remains challenging. This article introduces a novel type of untethered soft
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A Dual-Modal Hybrid Gripper with Wide Tunable Contact Stiffness Range and High Compliance for Adaptive and Wide-Range Grasping Objects with Diverse Fragilities. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-30 Jiaqi Zhu,Han Chen,Zhiping Chai,Han Ding,Zhigang Wu
The difficulties of traditional rigid/soft grippers in meeting the increasing performance expectations (e.g., high grasping adaptability and wide graspable objects range) of a single robotic gripper have given birth to numerous soft-rigid coupling grippers with promising performance. However, it is still hard for these hybrid grippers to adaptively grasp various objects with diverse fragilities intact
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Design and Kinematic Modeling of a Soft Continuum Telescopic Arm for the Self-Assembly Mechanism of a Modular Robot. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-25 Virgilio Gomez,Miguel Hernando,Esther Aguado,Daniel Bajo,Claudio Rossi
In recent years, the development of mining robots has grown significantly, offering improved efficiency and safety in hazardous environments. However, there is still room for improvement in adaptability, scalability, and overall performance. The ROBOMINERS project, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program, aims to facilitate Europe's access to mineral resources applying
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Soft Robotics to Enhance Upper Limb Endurance in Individuals with Multiple Sclerosis. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-23 Nicola Lotti,Francesco Missiroli,Elisa Galofaro,Enrica Tricomi,Dario Di Domenico,Marianna Semprini,Maura Casadio,Giampaolo Brichetto,Lorenzo De Michieli,Andrea Tacchino,Lorenzo Masia
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic autoimmune disorder that affects the central nervous system and can result in various symptoms, including muscle weakness, spasticity, and fatigue, ultimately leading to the deterioration of the musculoskeletal system. However, in recent years, exosuits have emerged as a game-changing solution to assist individuals with MS during their daily activities. These lightweight
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Learning to Control a Three-Dimensional Ferrofluidic Robot. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-23 Reza Ahmed,Roberto Calandra,Hamid Marvi
In recent years, ferrofluids have found increased popularity as a material for medical applications, such as ocular surgery, gastrointestinal surgery, and cancer treatment, among others. Ferrofluidic robots are multifunctional and scalable, exhibit fluid properties, and can be controlled remotely; thus, they are particularly advantageous for such medical tasks. Previously, ferrofluidic robot control
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Design of a Wearable Real-Time Hand Motion Tracking System Using an Array of Soft Polymer Acoustic Waveguides. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-23 Yuan Lin,Peter B Shull,Jean-Baptiste Chossat
Robust hand motion tracking holds promise for improved human-machine interaction in diverse fields, including virtual reality, and automated sign language translation. However, current wearable hand motion tracking approaches are typically limited in detection performance, wearability, and durability. This article presents a hand motion tracking system using multiple soft polymer acoustic waveguides
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A Flexible Escape Skin Bioinspired by the Defensive Behavior of Shedding Scales. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-18 Haili Li,Xingzhi Li,Pan Zhou,Xuanhao Zhang,Chunjie Wei,Jiantao Yao
Artificial skins with functions such as sensing, variable stiffness, actuation, self-healing, display, adhesion, and camouflage have been developed and widely used, but artificial skins with escape function are still a research gap. In nature, every species of animal can use its innate skills and functions to escape capture. Inspired by the behavior of fish-scale geckoes escaping predation by shedding
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Spikebot: A Multigait Tensegrity Robot with Linearly Extending Struts. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-11 Jinwook Jeong,Injoong Kim,Yunyeong Choi,Seonghyeon Lim,Seungkyu Kim,Hyeongwoo Kang,Dylan Shah,Robert Baines,Joran W Booth,Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio,Sang Yup Kim
Numerous recent research efforts have leveraged networks of rigid struts and flexible cables, called tensegrity structures, to create highly resilient and packable mobile robots. However, the locomotion of existing tensegrity robots is limited in terms of both speed and number of distinct locomotion modes, restricting the environments that a robot is capable of exploring. In this study, we present
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A Novel Extensible Continuum Robot with Growing Motion Capability Inspired by Plant Growth for Path-Following in Transoral Laryngeal Surgery. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-10-04 Yuhao Xu,Dezhi Song,Zhiqiang Zhang,Shuxin Wang,Chaoyang Shi
This article presents a novel extensible continuum robot (ECR) with growing motion capability for improved flexible access in transoral laryngeal procedures. The robot uses an extensible continuum joint with a staggered V-shaped notched structure as the backbone, driven by the pushing and pulling of superelastic Nitinol rods. The notched structure is optimized to achieve a wide range of extension/contraction
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Compliant Grasping Control for a Tactile Self-Sensing Soft Gripper. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-09-28 Hui Yang,Jiaqi Liu,Wenbo Liu,Weirui Liu,Zilong Deng,Yunzhi Ling,Changan Wang,Meixia Wu,Lihui Wang,Li Wen
Soft grippers with good passive compliance can effectively adapt to the shape of a target object and have better safe grasping performance than rigid grippers. However, for soft or fragile objects, passive compliance is insufficient to prevent grippers from crushing the target. Thus, to complete nondestructive grasping tasks, precision force sensing and control are immensely important for soft grippers
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Dielectric Elastomer Actuator-Based Valveless Impedance-Driven Pumping for Meso- and Macroscale Applications. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Amine Benouhiba,Armando Walter,Silje Ekroll Jahren,Thomas Martinez,Francesco Clavica,Dominik Obrist,Yoan Civet,Yves Perriard
Impedance pumps are simple designs that allow the generation or amplification of flow. They are fluid-filled systems based on flexible tubing connected to tubing with different impedances. A periodic off-center compression of the flexible tubing causes the fluid to move and generate flow. Wave reflection at the impedance mismatch is the primary driving mechanism of the flow. In addition to their straightforward
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Characterization of Temperature and Humidity Dependence in Soft Elastomer Behavior. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-09-05 Elze Porte,Sophia Eristoff,Anjali Agrawala,Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio
Soft robots are predicted to operate well in unstructured environments due to their resilience to impacts, embodied intelligence, and potential ability to adapt to uncertain circumstances. Soft robots are of further interest for space and extraterrestrial missions, owing to their lightweight and compressible construction. Most soft robots in the literature to-date are made of elastomer bodies. However
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Thermo-Pneumatic Artificial Muscle: Air-Based Thermo-Pneumatic Artificial Muscles for Pumpless Pneumatic Actuation. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-30 Jiseong Shin,Babar Jamil,Hyungpil Moon,Ja Choon Koo,Hyouk Ryeol Choi,Hugo Rodrigue
To make robots more human-like and safer to use around humans, artificial muscles exhibiting compliance have gained significant attention from researchers. However, despite having excellent performance, pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) have failed to gain significant traction in commercial mobile applications due to their requirement to be tethered to a pneumatic source. This study presents a thermo-PAM
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Soft Robotic Finger with Energy-Coupled Quadrastability. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-30 Zijie Sun,Tianqi Jiang,Zhenyu Wang,Pei Jiang,Yang Yang,Huaqiang Li,Teng Ma,Ji Luo
The performance of the human finger is a significant inspiration for designing soft robotic fingers that can achieve high speed and high force or perform delicate and complex tasks. Existing soft grippers and actuators can be excellent in specific capabilities. However, it is still challenging for them to meet an all-around performance as the human finger, characterized by high actuation speed, wide
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Lightweight Pneumatically Elastic Backbone Structure with Modular Construction and Nonlinear Interaction for Soft Actuators. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-25 Yang Yang,Jiewen Lai,Chaochao Xu,Zhiguo He,Pengcheng Jiao,Hongliang Ren
There has been a growing need for soft robots operating various force-sensitive tasks due to their environmental adaptability, satisfactory controllability, and nonlinear mobility unique from rigid robots. It is of desire to further study the system instability and strongly nonlinear interaction phenomenon that are the main influence factors to the actuations of lightweight soft actuators. In this
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Self-Locking Pneumatic Actuators Formed from Origami Shape-Morphing Sheets. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-24 Juri Kim,Joonbum Bae
The art of origami has gained traction in various fields such as architecture, the aerospace industry, and soft robotics, owing to the exceptional versatility of flat sheets to exhibit complex shape transformations. Despite the promise that origami robots hold, their use in high-capacity environments has been limited due to the lack of rigidity. This article introduces novel, origami-inspired, self-locking
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Inverse Origami Design Model for Soft Robotic Development. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-24 Qiqiang Hu,Junyang Li,Jian Tao,Erbao Dong,Dong Sun
Origami provides an opportunity to construct a wide range of 3D functional structures by folding a flat sheet. It can be used to develop various soft functional robots by combining soft smart actuators. However, a simple and an effective model that can address the challenging problem of designing origami patterns to connect origami design with robotics is lacking, thereby greatly increasing the threshold
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A Variable Stiffness Soft Gripper Based on Rotational Layer Jamming. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-21 Mingzhu Zhu,Mengying Xie,Yoshiki Mori,Junyue Dai,Sadao Kawamura,Xiaokui Yue
This article presents the design and fabrication of a variable stiffness soft gripper based on layer jamming. Traditional layer jamming units have some limitations, such as complicated multistep fabrication, difficulties in system integration, and diminishing in stiffen effect. In this article, a variable stiffness soft gripper is proposed based on the rotational jamming layers to reduce the slippery
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Latent Representation-Based Learning Controller for Pneumatic and Hydraulic Dual Actuation of Pressure-Driven Soft Actuators. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-17 Taku Sugiyama,Kyo Kutsuzawa,Dai Owaki,Mitsuhiro Hayashibe
The pneumatic and hydraulic dual actuation of pressure-driven soft actuators (PSAs) is promising because of their potential to develop novel practical soft robots and expand the range of soft robot applications. However, the physical characteristics of air and water are largely different, which makes it challenging to quickly adapt to a selected actuation method and achieve method-independent accurate
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A Deep Learning Framework for Soft Robots with Synthetic Data. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-17 Shageenderan Sapai,Junn Yong Loo,Ze Yang Ding,Chee Pin Tan,Vishnu Monn Baskaran,Surya Girinatha Nurzaman
Data-driven methods with deep neural networks demonstrate promising results for accurate modeling in soft robots. However, deep neural network models rely on voluminous data in discovering the complex and nonlinear representations inherent in soft robots. Consequently, while it is not always possible, a substantial amount of effort is required for data acquisition, labeling, and annotation. This article
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Engineering Magnetic Soft and Reconfigurable Robots. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-01 Linxiaohai Ning,Chayabhan Limpabandhu,Zion Tsz Ho Tse
Magnetic control has gained popularity recently due to its ability to enhance soft robots with reconfigurability and untethered maneuverability, among other capabilities. Several advancements in the fabrication and application of reconfigurable magnetic soft robots have been reported. This review summarizes novel fabrication techniques for designing magnetic soft robots, including chemical and physical
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Bioinspired Soft Spine Enables Small-Scale Robotic Rat to Conquer Challenging Environments. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-21 Ruochao Wang,Hang Xiao,Xiaolong Quan,Junhui Gao,Toshio Fukuda,Qing Shi
For decades, it has been difficult for small-scale legged robots to conquer challenging environments. To solve this problem, we propose the introduction of a bioinspired soft spine into a small-scale legged robot. By capturing the motion mechanism of rat erector spinae muscles and vertebrae, we designed a cable-driven centrally symmetric soft spine under limited volume and integrated it into our previous
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Robust Grasping of a Variable Stiffness Soft Gripper in High-Speed Motion Based on Reinforcement Learning. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-21 Mingzhu Zhu,Junyue Dai,Yu Feng
Industrial robots are widely deployed to perform pick-and-place tasks at high speeds to minimize manufacturing time and boost productivity. When dealing with delicate or fragile goods, soft robotic grippers are better end effectors than rigid grippers due to their softness and safe interaction. However, high-speed motion causes the soft robotic gripper to vibrate, leading to damage of the objects or
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Multimodal Locomotion in a Soft Robot Through Hierarchical Actuation. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-20 Qifan Yu,Nick Gravish
Soft and continuum robots present the opportunity for extremely large ranges of motion, which can enable dexterous, adaptive, and multimodal locomotion behaviors. However, as the number of degrees of freedom (DOF) of a robot increases, the number of actuators should also increase to achieve the full actuation potential. This presents a dilemma in mobile soft robot design: physical space and power requirements
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Simple and Fast Locomotion of Vibrating Asymmetric Soft Robots. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-20 Alberico Sabbadini,Mostafa A Atalla,Michaël Wiertlewski
To be fully integrated into the activities of our daily lives, robots need to be capable of traversing unstructured environments and interacting safely with their surroundings. Soft robots are perfect candidates since they can adapt to their surroundings through passive material compliance, rather than relying on complex control. However, the same compliance hinders the generation of propelling forces
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Nonbiomorphic Passively Adaptive Swimming Robot Enables Agile Propulsion in Cluttered Aquatic Environments. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-17 Bangyuan Liu,Frank L Hammond
Aquatic swimmers, whether natural or artificial, leverage their maneuverability and morphological adaptability to operate successfully in diverse, complex underwater environments. Maneuverability allows swimmers the agility to change speed and direction within a constrained operating space, while morphological adaptability allows their bodies to deform as they avoid obstacles and pass through narrow
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Tunable Folding Assembly Strategy for Soft Pneumatic Actuators. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Kaihang Zhang,Yaowei Fan,Shiming Shen,Xuxu Yang,Tiefeng Li
With intrinsic compliance, soft pneumatic actuators are widely utilized in delicate tasks. However, complex fabrication approaches and limited tunability are still problems. Here, we propose a tunable folding assembly strategy to design and fabricate soft pneumatic actuators called FASPAs (folding assembly soft pneumatic actuators). A FASPA consists only of a folded silicone tube constrained by rubber
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Synergistical Mechanical Design and Function Integration for Insect-Scale On-Demand Configurable Multifunctional Soft Magnetic Robots. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-07 Xingxing Ke,Haochen Yong,Fukang Xu,Zhiping Chai,Jiajun Jiang,Xiang Ni,Zhigang Wu
Meso- or micro-scale(or insect-scale) robots that are capable of realizing flexible locomotion and/or carrying on complex tasks in a remotely controllable manner hold great promise in diverse fields, such as biomedical applications, unknown environment exploration, in situ operation in confined spaces, and so on. However, the existing design and implementation approaches for such multifunctional, on-demand
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Magnetic Continuum Robot with Intraoperative Magnetic Moment Programming. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-05 Yanfei Cao,Zhengxin Yang,Bo Hao,Xin Wang,Mingxue Cai,Zhaoyang Qi,Bonan Sun,Qinglong Wang,Li Zhang
Magnetic continuum robots (MCRs), which are free of complicated structural designs for transmission, can be miniaturized and are therefore widely used in the medical field. However, the deformation shapes of different segments, including deflection directions and curvatures, are difficult to control simultaneously under an external programmable magnetic field. This is because the latest MCRs have designs
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Chemically Driven Oscillating Soft Pneumatic Actuation. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-06-29 Marcos Villeda-Hernandez,Benjamin C Baker,Christian Romero,Jonathan M Rossiter,Michael P M Dicker,Charl F J Faul
Pneumatic actuators are widely studied in soft robotics as they are facile, low cost, scalable, and robust and exhibit compliance similar to many systems found in nature. The challenge is to harness high energy density chemical and biochemical reactions that can generate sufficient pneumatic pressure to actuate soft systems in a controlled and ecologically compatible manner. This investigation evaluates
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A Novel Approach for Optimization of Soft Material Constitutive Model Parameters Based on a Genetic Algorithm and Drucker's Stability Criterion. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-06-23 Luis Cruz-Terán,Leopoldo Ruiz-Huerta,Alex Elias-Zuñiga,Oscar Martínez-Romero,Alberto Caballero-Ruiz
The growing interest in soft materials to develop flexible devices involves the need to create accurate methodologies to determine parameter values of constitutive models to improve their modeling. In this work, a novel approach for the optimization of constitutive model parameters is presented, which consists of using a genetic algorithm (GA) to obtain a set of solutions from data of uniaxial tensile
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Hygromachines: Humidity-Powered Wheels, Seesaws, and Vehicles. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-06-20 Munkyeong Choi,Beomjune Shin,Ho-Young Kim
Hygroscopic soft actuators offer an attractive means to convert environmental energy to mechanical motions as they use water vapor, a ubiquitous substance in the atmosphere. To overcome the limits of existing hygroactuators, such as simplistic actuation mode, slow response, and low efficiency, here we present three kinds of humidity-powered soft machines adopting directionally electrospun hygroresponsive
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Sequential Multimodal Morphing of Single-Input Pneu-Nets. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-06-19 Han Bi Jeong,Cheongsan Kim,Anna Lee,Ho-Young Kim
Soft actuators provide an attractive means for locomotion, gripping, and deployment of those machines and robots used in biomedicine, wearable electronics, automated manufacturing, etc. In this study, we focus on the shape-morphing ability of soft actuators made of pneumatic networks (pneu-nets), which are easy to fabricate with inexpensive elastomers and to drive with air pressure. As a conventional
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Selaginella lepidophylla-Inspired Multi-Stimulus Cooperative Control MXene-Based Flexible Actuator. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-06-19 Xiang Li,Ze Wu,Bingjue Li,Youqiang Xing,Peng Huang,Lei Liu
Predictable bending deformation, high cycle stability, and multimode complex motion have always been the goals pursued in the field of flexible robots. In this study, inspired by the delicate structure and humidity response characteristics of Selaginella lepidophylla, a new multilevel assisted assembly strategy was developed to construct MXene-CoFe2O4 (MXCFO) flexible actuators with different concentration
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Magnetic Liquid Metal Droplet Robot with Multifunction and High Output Force in Milli-Newton. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-06-16 Peiran Zhao,Liang Yan,Xiaoshan Gao
Magnetically actuated miniature robots have immeasurable potential in lab-on-a-chip and biomedical due to their ability to navigate in constrained space. However, current soft robots made by elastomers have limited functionalities and are prevented from very narrow environments such as channel much smaller than their size because of their non- or limited deformability. In this study, a soft and multifunctional
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JamTac: A Tactile Jamming Gripper for Searching and Grasping in Low-Visibility Environments. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-06-05 Shoujie Li,Linqi Ye,Haixin Yu,Xianghui Yin,Chongkun Xia,Wenbo Ding,Xueqian Wang,Bin Liang
Humans can feel and grasp efficiently in the dark through tactile feedback, whereas it is still a challenging task for robots. In this research, we create a novel soft gripper named JamTac, which has high-resolution tactile perception, a large detection surface, and integrated sensing-grasping capability that can search and grasp in low-visibility environments. The gripper combines granular jamming
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Maneuverable and Efficient Locomotion of a Myriapod Robot with Variable Body-Axis Flexibility via Instability and Bifurcation. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-05-24 Shinya Aoi,Yuki Yabuuchi,Daiki Morozumi,Kota Okamoto,Mau Adachi,Kei Senda,Kazuo Tsuchiya
Legged robots have remarkable terrestrial mobility, but are susceptible to falling and leg malfunction during locomotion. The use of a large number of legs, as in centipedes, can overcome these problems, but it makes the body long and leads to many legs being constrained to contact with the ground to support the long body, which impedes maneuverability. A mechanism for maneuverable locomotion using
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Human-Powered Master Controllers for Reconfigurable Fluidic Soft Robots. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-05-17 Yunce Zhang,Tao Wang,Weidong He,Shiqiang Zhu
Fluidic soft robots have the advantages of inherent compliance and adaptability, but they are significantly restricted by complex control systems and bulky power devices, including fluidic valves, fluidic pumps, electrical motors, as well as batteries, which make it challenging to operate in narrow space, energy shortage, or electromagnetic sensitive situations. To overcome the shortcomings, we develop
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Nonlinear Multimaterial Architecture for Greater Soft Material's Toughness and Delaying Damage Propagation. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-05-12 Marwa ElDiwiny,Seppe Terryn,Svetlana Verbruggen,Bram Vanderborght
Designing soft robots that have greater toughness and better resistance to damage propagation while at the same time retaining their properties of compliance is fundamentally important for soft robotics applications. This study's main contribution is proposing a framework for nonlinear multimaterial architectural design of soft structures to increase their toughness and delay damage propagation. What
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A Hybrid Anchoring Technology Composed of Reinforced Flexible Shells for a Knee Unloading Exosuit. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-05-08 Sung-Sik Yun,Christian William Bundschu,Kyu-Jin Cho
Soft robotic wearables have emerged as an ergonomic alternative to rigid robotic wearables, commonly utilizing tension-based actuation systems. However, their soft structure's natural tendency to buckle limits their use for compression bearing applications. This study presents reinforced flexible shell (RFS) anchoring, a compliant, low-profile, ergonomic wearable platform capable of high compression
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Design and Development of a Continuum Robot with Switching-Stiffness. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-05-04 Donghua Shen,Qi Zhang,Yali Han,Chunlei Tu,Xingsong Wang
Continuum robots have the advantages of agility and adaptability. However, existing continuum robots have limitations of low stiffness and complex motion modes, and the existing variable stiffness methods cannot achieve a wide range of stiffness changes and fast switching stiffness simultaneously. A continuum robot structure, switching stiffness method, and motion principle are proposed in this article
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Design, Modeling, and Application of Reinforced-Airbag-Based Pneumatic Actuators with High Load and Cellular Rearrangement. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-05-04 Manjia Su,Yu Qiu,Hongkai Chen,Cheng Huang,Yisheng Guan,Haifei Zhu
Although various soft pneumatic actuators have been studied, their performance, including load capacity, has not been satisfied yet. Enhancing their actuation capability and using them to develop soft robots with high performance is still an open and challenging issue. In this study, we developed novel pneumatic actuators based on fiber-reinforced airbags as a solution to this problem, of which the
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Development of an Anthropomorphic Soft Manipulator with Rigid-Flexible Coupling for Underwater Adaptive Grasping. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-05-03 Hui Ji,Yu Lan,Songlin Nie,Linfeng Huo,Fanglong Yin,Ruidong Hong
Inspired by human hands and wrists, an anthropomorphic soft manipulator (ASM) driven by water hydraulics is proposed for underwater operations and exploration. Compared with traditional rigid manipulator, ASM has highly evolved grasping ability with better flexibility and adaptability, while it has better load capacity, grasping ability, and flexibility in comparison with the pneumatic gripper. ASM
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Prescribing Cartesian Stiffness of Soft Robots by Co-Optimization of Shape and Segment-Level Stiffness. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-05-02 Francesco Stella,Josie Hughes,Daniela Rus,Cosimo Della Santina
Soft robots aim to revolutionize how robotic systems interact with the environment thanks to their inherent compliance. Some of these systems are even able to modulate their physical softness. However, simply equipping a robot with softness will not generate intelligent behaviors. Indeed, most interaction tasks require careful specification of the compliance at the interaction point; some directions
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Bio-SHARPE: Bioinspired Soft and High Aspect Ratio Pumping Element for Robotic and Medical Applications. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-05-02 James Davies,Mai Thanh Thai,Harrison Low,Phuoc Thien Phan,Trung Thien Hoang,Nigel Hamilton Lovell,Thanh Nho Do
The advent of soft robots has solved many issues posed by their rigid counterparts, including safer interactions with humans and the capability to work in narrow and complex environments. While much work has been devoted to developing soft actuators and bioinspired mechatronic systems, comparatively little has been done to improve the methods of actuation. Hydraulically soft actuators (HSAs) are emerging
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An Ionic Liquid-Based Stretchable Sensor for Measuring Normal and Shear Force. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-05-02 Omar Faruk Emon,Hao Sun,Ahadur Rahim,Jae-Won Choi
Soft and stretchable force sensors are widely used for health monitoring, robotics, prosthetics, and other applications. Soft force sensors with the capability of measuring both normal and shear force could offer even greater functionality and provide more information, particularly in the field of biomechanics. In this work, a new solid-state force sensor is proposed that can measure both normal and
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A Variable Stiffness Gripper with Reconfigurable Finger Joint for Versatile Manipulations. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Huan Wang,Bingtuan Gao,Anqing Hu,Jiahong He
A reconfigurable dexterous gripper is designed which can switch states, including rigidity and flexibility, for different application scenarios. Moreover, the stiffness of the fingers in the flexible state can also be tuned for different objects. Three fingers are connected to the revolute joints of the palm, and each finger has a reshape mechanism with a slider moving up and down to lock or release
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Tuning Stiffness with Granular Chain Structures for Versatile Soft Robots. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-04-20 Si-Qi An,Wen-Hao Li,Ji-Hui Li,Hai-Lin Zou,Zi-Chen Deng
Stiffness variation can greatly enhance soft robots' load capacity and compliance. Jamming methods are widely used where stiffness variation is realized by jamming of particles, layers, or fibers. It is still challenging to make the variable stiffness components lightweight and adaptive. Besides, the existing jamming mechanisms generally encounter deformation-induced softening, restricting their applications
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Multifunctional Soft Stackable Robots by Netting-Rolling-Splicing Pneumatic Artificial Muscles. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-04-19 Qinghua Guan,Liwu Liu,Jian Sun,Jiale Wang,Jianglong Guo,Yanju Liu,Jinsong Leng
Soft robots equipped with multifunctionalities have been increasingly needed for secure, adaptive, and autonomous functioning in unknown and unpredictable environments. Robotic stacking is a promising solution to increase the functional diversity of soft robots, which are required for safe human-machine interactions and adapting in unstructured environments. However, most existing multifunctional soft
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Kinetostatic Modeling of Soft Robots: Energy-Minimization Approach and 99-Line MATLAB Implementation. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-04-19 Xiaohui Pei,Guimin Chen
Soft robots have received a great deal of attention from both academia and industry due to their unprecedented adaptability in unstructured environment and extreme dexterity for complicated operations. Due to the strong coupling between the material nonlinearity due to hyperelasticity and the geometric nonlinearity due to large deflections, modeling of soft robots is highly dependent on commercial
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Reconfigurable Soft Pneumatic Actuators Using Extensible Fabric-Based Skins. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-04-12 Ajinkya Bhat,Shobhit Sandeep Jaipurkar,Li Ting Low,Raye Chen-Hua Yeow
The development of the field of soft robotics has led to the exploration of novel techniques to manufacture soft actuators, which provide distinct advantages for wearable assistive robotics. One subset of these soft pneumatic actuators is conventionally developed from silicone, fabrics, and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). Each of these materials in isolation possesses limitations of low-stress capacity
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Tunable, Textile-Based Joint Impedance Module for Soft Robotic Applications. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-04-12 Ciarán T O'Neill,Harrison T Young,Cameron J Hohimer,Tommaso Proietti,Mo Rastgaar,Panagiotis Artemiadis,Conor J Walsh
The design of soft actuators is often focused on achieving target trajectories or delivering specific forces and torques, rather than controlling the impedance of the actuator. This article outlines a new soft, tunable pneumatic impedance module based on an antagonistic actuator setup of textile-based pneumatic actuators intended to deliver bidirectional torques about a joint. Through mechanical programming
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A Multipole Magnetoactive Elastomer for Vibration-Driven Locomotion. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-04-03 Marius Reiche,Tatiana I Becker,Gennady V Stepanov,Klaus Zimmermann
Smart materials such as magnetoactive elastomers (MAEs) combine elastic and magnetic properties that can be significantly changed in response to a magnetic field and therefore offer enormous potential for applications in both scientific research and engineering. When such an elastomer contains microsized hard magnetic particles, it can become an elastic magnet once magnetized in a strong magnetic field
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Soft Robot Proprioception Using Unified Soft Body Encoding and Recurrent Neural Network. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-03-31 Liangliang Wang,James Lam,Xiaojiao Chen,Jing Li,Runzhi Zhang,Yinyin Su,Zheng Wang
Compared with rigid robots, soft robots are inherently compliant and have advantages in the tasks requiring flexibility and safety. But sensing the high dimensional body deformation of soft robots is a challenge. Encasing soft strain sensors into the internal body of soft robots is the most popular solution to address this challenge. But most of them usually suffer from problems like nonlinearity,
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Soft Electromagnetic Motor and Soft Magnetic Sensors for Synchronous Rotary Motion. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-03-28 Noah D Kohls,Roman Balak,Bryan P Ruddy,Yi Chen Mazumdar
To create fully-soft robots, fully-soft actuators are needed. Currently, soft rotary actuator topologies described in the literature exhibit low rotational speeds, which limit their applicability. In this work, we describe a novel, fully-soft synchronous rotary electromagnetic actuator and soft magnetic contact switch sensor concept. In this study, the actuator is constructed using gallium indium liquid
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Modular Soft Robot with Origami Skin for Versatile Applications. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-03-23 Tao Jin,Tianhong Wang,Quan Xiong,Yingzhong Tian,Long Li,Quan Zhang,Chen-Hua Yeow
Recent advances in soft robotics demonstrate the requirement of modular actuation to enable the rapid replacement of actuators for maintenance and functionality extension. There remain challenges to designing soft actuators capable of different motions with a consistent appearance for simplifying fabrication and modular connection. Origami structures reshaping along with their unique creases became
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Macro Fiber Composite-Actuated Soft Robotic Fish: A Gray Box Model-Predictive Motion Planning Strategy Under Limited Actuation. Soft Robot. (IF 7.9) Pub Date : 2023-03-23 Arthur Silva Barbosa,Maíra Martins da Silva
This work experimentally investigates a model-predictive motion planning strategy to impose oscillatory and undulation movements in a macro fiber composite (MFC)-actuated robotic fish. Most of the results in this field exploit sinusoidal input signals at the resonance frequency, which reduces the device's maneuverability. Differently, this work uses body/caudal fin locomotion patterns as references