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Abstract
Soft robotics is a fast-emerging interdisciplinary field combining mechatronics, control, material science and biomimetics. With their unique inherent compliance feature, soft robots have advantages over rigid-bodied robots for operations in unstructured environments. On the other hand, most soft robots reported to date are laboratory prototypes rather than end products. To fill this gap, they must undergo multiple transitions from an engineering perspective, through which soft robots are optimised in design, fabrication, power, control, and other engineering criteria, and be proven of their application worthiness. This paper compares conventional soft robotic technologies with the latest developments, and reviews the most recent advances of several engineering-oriented aspects of soft robotics research: fabrication technique standardisation which helps improve the repeatability and reliability of soft actuators; modelling and characterisation from both theoretical and simulation approaches which allow for the systematic analysis of soft robot behaviour and performance; evaluation works on soft actuator drive and power methods which provide insights into how to energise and optimise for the most suitable soft robot for a particular application; untethering soft robots which further relax their physical limitations and enable operations over a greater distance across all-terrain, all-habitat environments; and other factors such as actuation speed, fatigue, and failure modes.
Funding
The work is partially supported by the University of Hong Kong Seed funding for basic research, 201409159016.
ORCID
Zheng Wang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7726-0770
Additional information
Dr Zheng Wang received his B.Sc. degree with merit from Tsinghua University, the Mainland China, his M.Sc. degree with distinction from Imperial College, the UK, and Ph.D. degree with merit from Technische Universität München, Germany. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Nanyang Tech. University, Singapore between 2010 and 2013, and a postdoctoral fellow with the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute of Bioinspired Engineering at Harvard University in 2013/14. Since July 2014, he has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include haptics human-robot interaction, teleoperation, cable-driven mechanisms, and soft robotics.
Dr Michael Z Q Chen received his BEng degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and his Ph.D. degree in Control Engineering from Cambridge University, the UK. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the University of Hong Kong. Dr Chen is a Fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. He is now a Guest Associate Editor for the International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos.
Miss Juan Yi received her B.Sc. degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (China), in 2014. Since September 2014, she has been a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Hong Kong. Her current research interest is soft robotics.
