Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2014 Jan 30:2:3.
doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2014.00003. eCollection 2014.

Soft Robotics: New Perspectives for Robot Bodyware and Control

Cecilia Laschi  1 , Matteo Cianchetti  1
Affiliations
Review

Soft Robotics: New Perspectives for Robot Bodyware and Control

Cecilia Laschi et al. Front Bioeng Biotechnol. .

Abstract

The remarkable advances of robotics in the last 50 years, which represent an incredible wealth of knowledge, are based on the fundamental assumption that robots are chains of rigid links. The use of soft materials in robotics, driven not only by new scientific paradigms (biomimetics, morphological computation, and others), but also by many applications (biomedical, service, rescue robots, and many more), is going to overcome these basic assumptions and makes the well-known theories and techniques poorly applicable, opening new perspectives for robot design and control. The current examples of soft robots represent a variety of solutions for actuation and control. Though very first steps, they have the potential for a radical technological change. Soft robotics is not just a new direction of technological development, but a novel approach to robotics, unhinging its fundamentals, with the potential to produce a new generation of robots, in the support of humans in our natural environments.

Keywords: biomimetic robotics; biorobotics; morphological computation; smart materials; soft robotics.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Pneumatic tentacle-like soft manipulator (Martinez et al., 2013) (reproduced with permission from John Wiley and Sons).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Flexible octopus-like robot arm, composed by a braided sheath actuated by SMA springs (photo by Massimo Brega, The Lighthouse).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Albu-Schäffer A., Eiberger O., Grebenstein M., Haddadin S., Ott C., Wimbock T., et al. (2008). Soft robotics. IEEE Robot. Autom. Mag. 15, 20–3010.1109/MRA.2008.927979 - DOI
    1. Asuni G., Teti G., Laschi C., Guglielmelli E., Dario P. (2006). Extension to end-effector position and orientation control of a learning-based neurocontroller for a humanoid arm. IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. Intell. Robots Syst. 4151–415610.1109/IROS.2006.281904 - DOI
    1. Boyer F., Porez M., Khalil W. (2006). Macro-continuous computed torque algorithm for a three-dimensional Eel-like robot. IEEE Trans. Robot. 22, 763–77510.1109/TRO.2006.875492 - DOI
    1. Brooks R. A. (1991). New approaches to robotics. Science 253, 1227–123210.1126/science.253.5025.1227 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Brown E., Rodenberg N., Amend J., Mozeika A., Steltz E., Zakin M. R., et al. (2010). Universal robotic gripper based on the jamming of granular material. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107, 18809–1881410.1073/pnas.1003250107 - DOI

LinkOut - more resources