Soft robotics: the route to true robotic organisms

Abstract

Soft Robotics has come to the fore in the last decade as a new way of conceptualising, designing and fabricating robots. Soft materials empower robots with locomotion, manipulation, and adaptability capabilities beyond those possible with conventional rigid robots. Soft robots can also be made from biological, biocompatible and biodegradable materials. This offers the tantalising possibility of bridging the gap between robots and organisms. Here, we discuss the properties of soft materials and soft systems that make them so attractive for future robots. In doing so, we consider how future robots can behave like, and have abilities akin to, biological organisms. These include huge numbers, finite lifetime, homeostasis and minimal—and even positive—environmental impact. This paves the way for future robots, not as machines, but as robotic organisms.

Adopting Physical Artificial Intelligence in Soft Aerial Robots

“…Akin to nature, organic material that makes up a living organism degrades harmlessly into the environment. Thus, for aerial vehicles, there needs to be a constant push towards the development of biodegradable bodies [213,224], actuators [216,217], and sensors [8,214,225,226]. There have been various recently developed biodegradable bio-polymers that are pneumatically or electrically actuated.…”

“…In recent years, there has been a significant multidisciplinary effort towards developing highly intelligent robots akin to biological organisms [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. This new dawn towards the next generation of "robotic organisms" reinforces the need for robots with capabilities to autonomously adapt to the wild and unstructured environment [1,8]. Thus, highlighting capabilities such as physical reconfigurability, robustness, multimodality and multifunctionality, through the utilization of smart structures.…”

Advances in Biodegradable Soft Robots

“…Multiscale stimuli-responsive hydrogel-based soft robots have demonstrated a variety of intelligent applications in manipulators, wearable electronics, and healthcare systems [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ]. In general, stimuli-responsive soft robots have components made of elastic materials and actuation is achieved through continuum material deformations [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. Compared with rigid body systems, stimuli-responsive soft robots exhibit a high degree of continuous shape deformation when triggered by external stimuli such as pneumatics, heat, pH, light, or even biomaterials [ 7 , 14 , 15 ].…”

Soft Magneto‐Responsive Shape Memory Foam Composite Actuators

“…With this kind of robotics, a variety of unique soft mobile platforms, manipulators, and other structures have been developed that can carry out a variety of increasingly complicated activities, including wearable robotics, object manipulation, and mobility over uneven terrain. [3][4][5][6] These objectives are driven by a variety of actuation concepts, including tendon and pressure actuation as well as reactions to different stimuli (such as magnet, humidity, temperature, and light). [7,8] Elastomeric soft actuators continue to get more complicated, and roboticists push the limits of soft robotics in order to create actuators and sensors with more advanced designs.…”