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In soft devices, complex actuation sequences and precise force control typically require hard electronic valves and microcontrollers. Existing designs for entirely soft pneumatic control systems are capable of either digital or analog operation, but not both, and are limited by speed of actuation, range of pressure, time required for fabrication, or loss of power through pull-down resistors. Using the nonlinear mechanics intrinsic to structures composed of soft materials—in this case, by leveraging membrane inversion and tube kinking—two modular soft components are developed: a piston actuator and a bistable pneumatic switch. These two components combine to create valves capable of analog pressure regulation, simplified digital logic, controlled oscillation, nonvolatile memory storage, linear actuation, and interfacing with human users in both digital and analog formats. Three demonstrations showcase the capabilities of systems constructed from these valves: 1) a wearable glove capable of analog control of a soft artificial robotic hand based on input from a human user’s fingers, 2) a human-controlled cushion matrix designed for use in medical care, and 3) an untethered robot which travels a distance dynamically programmed at the time of operation to retrieve an object. This work illustrates pathways for complementary digital and analog control of soft robots using a unified valve design.

HighlightsA comprehensive review focused on the whole systems of the soft robotics with artificial intelligence, which can feel, think, react and interact with humans, is presented.The design strategies concerning about various aspects of the soft robotics, like component materials, device structures, prepared technologies, integrated method, and potential applications, are summarized.A broad outlook on the future considerations for the soft robots is proposed.In recent years, breakthrough has been made in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), which has also revolutionized the industry of robotics. Soft robots featured with high-level safety, less weight, lower power consumption have always been one of the research hotspots. Recently, multifunctional sensors for perception of soft robotics have been rapidly developed, while more algorithms and models of machine learning with high accuracy have been optimized and proposed. Designs of soft robots with AI have also been advanced ranging from multimodal sensing, human–machine interaction to effective actuation in robotic systems. Nonetheless, comprehensive reviews concerning the new developments and strategies for the ingenious design of the soft robotic systems equipped with AI are rare. Here, the new development is systematically reviewed in the field of soft robots with AI. First, background and mechanisms of soft robotic systems are briefed, after which development focused on how to endow the soft robots with AI, including the aspects of feeling, thought and reaction, is illustrated. Next, applications of soft robots with AI are systematically summarized and discussed together with advanced strategies proposed for performance enhancement. Design thoughts for future intelligent soft robotics are pointed out. Finally, some perspectives are put forward.

Background Spinal cord injury is a devastating condition that can dramatically impact hand motor function. Passive and active assistive devices are becoming more commonly used to enhance lost hand strength and dexterity. Soft robotics is an emerging discipline that combines the classical principles of robotics with soft materials and could provide a new class of active assistive devices. Soft robotic assistive devices enable a human-robot interaction facilitated by compliant and light-weight structures. The scope of this work was to demonstrate that a fabric-based soft robotic glove can effectively assist participants affected by spinal cord injury in manipulating objects encountered in daily living. Methods The Toronto Rehabilitation Institute Hand Function Test was administered to 9 participants with C4-C7 spinal cord injuries to assess the functionality of the soft robotic glove. The test included object manipulation tasks commonly encountered during activities of daily living (ADL) and lift force measurements. The test was administered to each participant twice; once without the assistive glove to provide baseline data and once while wearing the assistive glove. The object manipulation subtests were evaluated using a linear mixed model, including interaction effects of variables such as time since injury. The lift force measures were separately evaluated using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results The soft robotic glove improved object manipulation in ADL tasks. The difference in mean scores between baseline and assisted conditions was significant across all participants and for all manipulated objects. An improvement of 33.42 ± 15.43% relative to the maximal test score indicates that the glove sufficiently enhances hand function during ADL tasks. Moreover, lift force also increased when using the assistive soft robotic glove, further demonstrating the effectiveness of the device in assisting hand function. Conclusions The results gathered in this study validate our fabric-based soft robotic glove as an effective device to assist hand function in individuals who have suffered upper limb paralysis following a spinal cord injury.

Soft robotics enriches the robotic functionalities by engineering soft materials and electronics toward enhanced compliance, adaptivity, and friendly human machine. This decade has witnessed extraordinary progresses and benefits in scaling down soft robotics to small scale for a wide range of potential and promising applications, including medical and surgical soft robots, wearable and rehabilitation robots, and unconstructed environments exploration. This perspective highlights recent research efforts in miniature soft robotics in a brief and comprehensive way in terms of actuation, powering, designs, fabrication, control, and applications in four sections. Section 2 discusses the key aspects of materials selection and structural designs for small‐scale tethered and untethered actuation and powering, including fluidic actuation, stimuli‐responsive actuation, and soft living biohybrid materials, as well as structural forms from 1D to 3D. Section 3 discusses the advanced manufacturing techniques at small scales for fabricating miniature soft robots, including lithography, mechanical self‐assembly, additive manufacturing, tissue engineering, and other fabrication methods. Section 4 discusses the control systems used in miniature robots, including off‐board/onboard controls and artificial intelligence‐based controls. Section 5 discusses their potential broad applications in healthcare, small‐scale objects manipulating and processing, and environmental monitoring. Finally, outlooks on the challenges and opportunities are discussed. Miniature soft robotics is becoming an emerging area due to small‐dimension benefits for confined space exploration. This perspective discusses and outlooks the opportunities and challenges of miniaturizing conventional macroscale soft robotics to small scales. It covers the state‐of‐the‐art miniature soft robotic systems in a brief yet comprehensive way, from materials, designs, actuation, powering, fabrication, to control and applications.

Rapid energy‐efficient movements are one of nature's greatest developments. Mechanisms like snap‐buckling allow plants like the Venus flytrap to close the terminal lobes of their leaves at barely perceptible speed. Here, a soft balloon actuator is presented, which is inspired by such mechanical instabilities and creates safe, giant, and fast deformations. The basic design comprises two inflated elastomer membranes pneumatically coupled by a pressurized chamber of suitable volume. The high‐speed actuation of a rubber balloon in a state close to the verge of mechanical instability is remotely triggered by a voltage‐controlled dielectric elastomer membrane. This method spatially separates electrically active and passive parts, and thereby averts electrical breakdown resulting from the drastic thinning of an electroactive membrane during large expansion. Bistable operation with small and large volumes of the rubber balloon is demonstrated, achieving large volume changes of 1398% and a high‐speed area change rate of 2600 cm2 s−1. The presented combination of fast response time with large deformation and safe handling are central aspects for a new generation of soft bio‐inspired robots and can help pave the way for applications ranging from haptic displays to soft grippers and high‐speed sorting machines. A voltage‐triggered soft balloon actuator with an impressive displacement (1398% total volume change) at high speed (2600 cm2 s−1 area change rate) is developed by harnessing the mechanical snap‐through and snap‐back instability of a rubber balloon. The trigger actuator is pneumatically coupled to the high‐speed actuator. This concept promises applications in soft bio‐inspired systems in modern robotics and engineering.

Inspired by the way sea turtles rely on the Earth’s magnetic field for navigation and locomotion, a novel magnetic soft robotic turtle with programmable magnetization has been developed and investigated to achieve biomimetic locomotion patterns such as straight-line swimming and turning swimming. The soft robotic turtle (12.50 mm in length and 0.24 g in weight) is integrated with an Ecoflex-based torso and four magnetically programmed acrylic elastomer VHB-based limbs containing samarium-iron–nitrogen particles, and was able to carry a load more than twice its own weight. Similar to the limb locomotion characteristics of sea turtles, the magnetic torque causes the four limbs to mimic sinusoidal bending deformation under the influence of an external magnetic field, so that the turtle swims continuously forward. Significantly, when the bending deformation magnitudes of its left and right limbs differ, the soft robotic turtle switches from straight-line to turning swimming at 6.334 rad/s. Furthermore, the tracking swimming activities of the soft robotic turtle along specific planned paths, such as square-shaped, S-shaped, and double U-shaped maze, is anticipated to be utilized for special detection and targeted drug delivery, among other applications owing to its superior remote directional control ability.

Soft robotic grippers are required for power grasping of objects without inducing damage. Additive manufacturing can be used to produce custom-made grippers for industrial robots, in which soft joints and links are additively manufactured. In this study, a monoblock soft robotic gripper having three geometrically gradient fingers with soft sensors was designed and additively manufactured for the power grasping of spherical objects. The monoblock structure design reduces the number of components to be assembled for the soft gripper, and the gripper is designed with a single cavity to enable bending by the application of pneumatic pressure, which is required for the desired actuation. Finite element analysis (FEA) using a hyperelastic material model was performed to simulate the actuation. A material extrusion process using a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) was used to manufacture the designed gripper. Soft sensors were produced by a screen printing process that uses a flexible material and ionic liquids. The grasping capability of the manufactured gripper was experimentally evaluated by changing the pneumatic pressure (0–0.7 MPa) of the cavity. Experimental results show that the proposed monoblock gripper with integrated soft sensors successfully performed real-time grasp detection for power grasping.

Background Mirror therapy (MT) has been used for functional recovery of the affected hand by providing the mirrored image of the unaffected hand movement, which induces neural activation of the cortical hemisphere contralateral to the affected hand. Recently, many wearable robots assisting the movement of the hand have been developed, and several studies have proposed robotic mirror therapy (RMT) that uses a robot to provide mirrored movements of the unaffected hand to the affected hand with the robot controlled by measuring electromyography or posture of the unaffected hand. In some cases of RMT a mirror is placed to allow the person to observe only the unaffected hand but in others users simply observe the robotically assisted hand performing the mirrored movements, as was the case in this study. There have been limited evaluations of the cortical activity during RMT compared to MT and robotic therapy (RT) providing passive movements despite the difference in the modality of sensory feedback and the involvement of motor intention, respectively. Methods This paper analyzes bilateral motor cortex activation in nine healthy subjects and five chronic stroke survivors during a pinching task performed in MT, RT, and RMT conditions using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). In the MT condition, the person moved the unaffected hand and observed it in a mirror while the affected hand remained still. In RT condition passive movements were provided to the affected hand with a cable-driven soft robotic glove, while, in RMT condition, the posture of the unaffected hand was measured by a sensing glove and the soft robotic glove mirrored its movement on the affected hand. Results For both groups, the RMT condition showed the greatest mean cortical activation on the motor cortex contralateral to the affected (non-dominant for the healthy group) hand compared to other conditions. Individual results indicate that RMT induces similar or greater neural activation on the motor cortex compared to MT and RT conditions. The interhemispheric activations of both groups were balanced in RMT condition. In MT condition, significantly greater activation was shown on the hemisphere ipsilateral to the affected (dominant for the healthy group) hand for both subject groups, while the contralateral side showed significantly greater activation for the healthy group in RT condition. Conclusion The experimental results indicate that combining visual feedback, somatosensory feedback, and motor intention are important for greater stimulation on the contralateral motor cortex of the affected hand. RMT that includes these factors is hypothesized to achieve a more effective functional rehabilitation due to greater and more balanced cortical activation.

Recent advances in functionally graded additive manufacturing (FGAM) technology have enabled the seamless hybridization of multiple functionalities in a single structure. Soft robotics can become one of the largest beneficiaries of these advances, through the design of a facile four-dimensional (4D) FGAM process that can grant an intelligent stimuli-responsive mechanical functionality to the printed objects. Herein, we present a simple binder jetting approach for the 4D printing of functionally graded porous multi-materials (FGMM) by introducing rationally designed graded multiphase feeder beds. Compositionally graded cross-linking agents gradually form stable porous network structures within aqueous polymer particles, enabling programmable hygroscopic deformation without complex mechanical designs. Furthermore, a systematic bed design incorporating additional functional agents enables a multi-stimuli-responsive and untethered soft robot with stark stimulus selectivity. The biodegradability of the proposed 4D-printed soft robot further ensures the sustainability of our approach, with immediate degradation rates of 96.6% within 72 h. The proposed 4D printing concept for FGMMs can create new opportunities for intelligent and sustainable additive manufacturing in soft robotics. The binder jetting method for the 4D printing of soft robots has been developed. Compositionally graded cross-linking agents gradually form stable porous network structures that enable programmable hygroscopic deformation. A multi-stimuli-responsive and untethered soft robot with stark stimulus selectivity has been developed using the systematic bed design incorporating additional functional agents. The biodegradability of the soft robot has been confirmed with degradation rates of 96.6% within 72 h.

Soft robotic grippers are able to carry out many tasks that traditional rigid-bodied grippers cannot perform but often have many limitations in terms of control and feedback. In this study, a Fin Ray effect inspired soft robotic gripper is proposed with its whole body directly 3D printed using soft material without the need of assembly. As a result, the soft gripper has a light weight, simple structure, is enabled with high compliance and conformability, and is able to grasp objects with arbitrary geometry. A force sensor is embedded in the inner side of the gripper, which allows the contact force required to grip the object to be measured in order to guarantee successful grasping and to provide the most suitable gripping force. In addition, it enables control and data monitoring of the gripper’s operating state at all times. Characterization and grasping demonstration of the gripper are given in the Experiment section. Results show that the gripper can be used in a wide range of scenarios and applications, such as the service robot and food industry.