A pneumatically powered, reconfigurable omnidirectional soft robot based on caterpillar locomotion is described. The robot is composed of nine modules arranged as a three by three matrix and the length of this matrix is 154 mm. The robot propagates a traveling wave inspired by caterpillar locomotion, and it has all three degrees of freedom on a plane (X, Y, and rotation). The speed of the robot is about 18.5 m/h (two body lengths per minute) and it can rotate at a speed of 1.63°/s. The modules have neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets embedded and can be easily replaced or combined into other configurations. Two different configurations are presented to demonstrate the possibilities of the modular structure: (1) by removing some modules, the omnidirectional robot can be reassembled into a form that can crawl in a pipe and (2) two omnidirectional robots can crawl close to each other and be assembled automatically into a bigger omnidirectional robot. Omnidirectional motion is important for soft robots to explore unstructured environments. The modular structure gives the soft robot the ability to cope with the challenges of different environments and tasks.

Recent advances in soft materials enable robots to possess safer human-machine interaction ways and adaptive motions, yet there remain substantial challenges to develop universal driving power sources that can achieve performance trade-offs between actuation, speed, portability, and reliability in untethered applications. Here, we introduce a class of fully soft electronic pumps that utilize electrical energy to pump liquid through electrons and ions migration mechanism. Soft pumps combine good portability with excellent actuation performances. We develop special functional liquids that merge unique properties of electrically actuation and self-healing function, providing a direction for self-healing fluid power systems. Appearances and pumpabilities of soft pumps could be customized to meet personalized needs of diverse robots. Combined with a homemade miniature high-voltage power converter, two different soft pumps are implanted into robotic fish and vehicle to achieve their untethered motions, illustrating broad potential of soft pumps as universal power sources in untethered soft robotics.

Flexible, material‐based, artificial muscles enable compliant and safe technologies for human–machine interaction devices and adaptive soft robots, yet there remain long‐term challenges in the development of artificial muscles capable of mimicking flexible, controllable, and multifunctional human activity. Inspired by human limb's activity strategy, combining muscles' adjustable stiffness and joints' origami folding, controllable stiffness origami “skeletons,” which are created by laminar jamming and origami folding of multiple layers of flexible sandpaper, are embedded into a common monofunctional vacuumed‐powered cube‐shaped (CUBE) artificial muscle, thereby enabling the monofunctional CUBE artificial muscle to achieve lightweight and multifunctionality as well as controllable force/motion output without sacrificing its volume and shape. Successful demonstrations of arms self‐assembly and cooperatively gripping different objects and a “caterpillar” robot climbing different pipes illustrate high operational redundancy and high‐force output through “building blocks” assembly of multifunctional CUBE artificial muscles. Controllable stiffness origami “skeletons” offer a facile and low‐cost strategy to fabricate lightweight and multifunctional artificial muscles for numerous potential applications such as wearable assistant devices, miniature surgical instruments, and soft robots.

A state‐of‐the‐art review of the modular soft robots (MSRs) is presented, with an outlook on the challenges and future directions of intelligent MSRs. In contrast to conventional robots composed of rigid materials, soft robots made from soft materials offer remarkable advantages in achieving various adaptive locomotion, manipulating delicate objects, providing safe human–robot interaction and adapting to confined environments due to their excellent compliance and adaptability, which have the potential to be widely used in numerous applications such as medical, exploration and rescue devices, etc. Unlike fixed‐morphology soft robots, modularization of soft robots is a low‐cost and rapid strategy that enables them to adapt to changing tasks and environments by rearranging the connectivity of module units and attain complex functionalities such as self‐assembly, self‐repair, or self‐replication. Although MSRs exhibit many advantages, they are still in the nascent stage with plenty of challenges. Herein, first the materials, fabrication, actuation, sensor, and control of various modular units in MSRs are introduced. Then, some main connection methods between modular units are summarized. Finally, the applications, challenges, and developing directions of intelligent MSRs are discussed.

The stress‐response strategy is one of the nature's greatest developments, enabling animals and plants to respond quickly to environmental stimuli. One example is the stress‐response strategy of the Venus flytrap, which enables such a delicate plant to perceive and prey on insects at an imperceptible speed by their soft terminal lobes. Here, inspired by this unique stress‐response strategy, a soft gripper that aims at the challenges of high‐speed dynamic grasping tasks is presented. The gripper, called high‐speed soft gripper (HSG), is based on two basic design concepts. One is a snap‐through instability that enables the HSG to sense the mechanical stimuli and actuating instantly. The other one is the spider‐inspired pneumatic‐powered control system that makes the trigger process repeatable and controllable. Utilizing the stress‐response strategy, the HSG can accomplish high‐speed sensing and grasping and handle a dynamic grasping task like catching a thrown baseball. Whereas soft machines typically exhibit slow locomotion speed and low manipulation strength for the intrinsic limitations of soft materials, the exploration of the stress‐response strategy in this study can help pave the way for designing a new generation of practical high‐speed soft robots.