In recent years, magnetism has gained an enormous amount of interest among researchers for actuating different sizes and types of bio/soft robots, which can be via an electromagnetic‐coil system, or a system of moving permanent magnets. Different actuation strategies are used in robots with magnetic actuation having a number of advantages in possible realization of microscale robots such as bioinspired microrobots, tetherless microrobots, cellular microrobots, or even normal size soft robots such as electromagnetic soft robots and medical robots. This review provides a summary of recent research in magnetically actuated bio/soft robots, discussing fabrication processes and actuation methods together with relevant applications in biomedical area and discusses future prospects of this way of actuation for possible improvements in performance of different types of bio/soft robots.

consists of networks of expandable fluidic chambers within a highly deformable elastomer that can be driven in bending, tensile, or compressive modalities and these have been utilized in manipulation, [5,6] locomotion, [7] and wearable technologies. [8] Fluidic actuators are typically pneumatic and usually adopt bulky and rigid air compression systems that restrict their application in untethered mobile and wearable devices. [9,10] The conventional setup of a single centralized air compressor with multiple distributed pneumatic actuators are further limited by the scaling of pressure losses as the air supply channels become thinner and longer. Miniature piezoelectric, electromagnetic, [11] and chemical combustion pumps [12] have the potential to decentralize the air supply to compensate for the pressure loss. However, their actuation mechanisms typically rely on rigid or inextensible components, which can introduce a hard discontinuity in soft robotic systems due to the stiffness mismatch and consequently compromise advanced behaviors such as computational morphology [13] and overcomplicate the system design.Advancing embeddable soft pump technologies toward integrated fluidic elastomer networks requires novel solutions that move beyond the paradigm of rigid compressor technologies. Emerging soft actuators such as dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) possess significant shape-changing characteristics which creates opportunities for novel soft fluidic pump designs. [14] DEAs have the capacity for large actuation strains and high energy densities in a readily scalable form [15] and have been demonstrated to operate for over 400 million cycles. [16] The fundamental structure of a DEA consists of an elastic membrane sandwiched between compliant electrodes. When subjected to an electric field, the generated Maxwell stress causes the membrane to expand inplane and compress out-of-plane. While the applied voltages of DEAs are typically high (>1 kV), which may require encapsulation for robotic applications, recent advances in reducing the membrane thickness to only 3 µm techniques using pad-printing fabrication reduced the driving voltage to 300 V. [17] Based on this actuation mechanism, many DEA-based applications were developed including grippers, [18,19] lens, [20] loudspeakers. [21] Peristaltic [22] and diaphragm DEA-based pumps [23][24][25] have been reported. A DEA-driven fluidic micromixer demonstrated peristaltic pumping [22] but is less effective for soft robotics due to low flowrates (21.5 µL min −1 ). DEA diaphragm pumps have shown the advantage that DE membranes can serve both as a chamber Fluidic elastomer actuators have become ubiquitous in soft robotics as they can be used to create inherently compliant systems with embodied intelligence. However, they typically use conventional rigid air-compression systems that restrict their application in untethered mobile and wearable devices. An embeddable pneumatic diaphragm pump is presented for soft robotics driven by a magnetically coupled dielectric elastomer a...

Cilia are used effectively in a wide variety of biological systems from fluid transport to thrust generation. Here, we present the design and implementation of artificial cilia, based on a biomimetic planar actuator using softsmart materials. This actuator is modelled on the cilia movement of the alga Volvox, and represents the cilium as a piecewise constant-curvature robotic actuator that enables the subsequent direct translation of natural articulation into a multi-segment ionic polymer metal composite actuator. It is demonstrated how the combination of optimal segmentation pattern and biologically derived per-segment driving signals reproduce natural ciliary motion. The amenability of the artificial cilia to scaling is also demonstrated through the comparison of the Reynolds number achieved with that of natural cilia.

Despite the growing interest in soft robotics, little attention has been paid to the development of soft matter computational mechanisms. Embedding computation directly into soft materials is not only necessary for the next generation of fully soft robots but also for smart materials to move beyond stimulus-response relationships and toward the intelligent behaviors seen in biological systems. This article describes soft matter computers (SMCs), low-cost, and easily fabricated computational mechanisms for soft robots. The building block of an SMC is a conductive fluid receptor (CFR), which maps a fluidic input signal to an electrical output signal via electrodes embedded into a soft tube. SMCs could perform both analog and digital computation. The potential of SMCs is demonstrated by integrating them into three soft robots: (i) a Softworm robot was controlled by an SMC that generated the control signals necessary for three distinct gaits; (ii) a soft gripper was given a set of reflexes that could be programmed by adjusting the parameters of the CFR; and (iii) a two–degree of freedom bending actuator was switched between three distinct behaviors by varying only one input parameter. SMCs are a low-cost way to integrate computation directly into soft materials and an important step toward entirely soft autonomous robots.