About this Research Topic

Background

Soft robots represent an emerging class of bio-inspired machines that are mainly composed of soft matter such as elastomers, gels, fabrics, and fluids. Due to their inherent hyperelasticity and compliance, soft robots can adapt to uneven surfaces and distribute external forces, and therefore have potential advantages over traditional piecewise rigid robots in manoeuvring through complicated and unknown environments. As the cornerstone of a soft robot, soft robotic artificial muscles have been developed for actuation with a wide variety of mechanisms, including fluidic actuation, electrical actuation (e.g. shape memory alloy actuators, dielectric elastomer actuators, and piezoelectric actuators), magnetic field actuation, light actuation (e.g. liquid crystal elastomer actuators), etc

Despite dramatic advancements on soft robotic artificial muscles in the past decades, many challenges remain in the development of a soft artificial muscle for robots that is capable of swift and precise actuation, produces sufficient forces for dynamic and versatile locomotion, can be controlled with high fidelity, and can be modelled efficiently and accurately. Progress has been limited by the following critical gaps: (1) advanced functional materials in combination with material architectures that can deliver the actuation performance required (e.g. actuation frequency, output force, displacement, life cycle, consistency); (2) mechanical designs that lower the requirement of bulky hardware for untethered actuation in artificial muscles; (3) physical understanding of the underlying nonlinear mechanics and dynamics of soft artificial muscles for control purposes; (4) feedback control systems that connect the materials, designs, and models for practical operation of soft robots with artificial muscles.

The goal of this Research Topic is to present recent progress on the materials, design, modeling and control of soft artificial muscles that have the potential to advance the performance and robustness of soft robots with artificial muscles in locomotion, manipulation, and other robotics tasks. The scope of the research topic includes but is not limited to:

1) Multifunctional materials and architectures for soft robotic artificial muscles,
2) Lightweight and compact designs that enable rapid actuation of soft artificial muscles in 3D,
3) Modeling of the underlying mechanisms for the actuation of soft robotic artificial muscles,
4) Control systems for soft robots with artificial muscles.

Keywords: Soft Multifunctional Materials, Soft Actuator Design, Soft Actuator Modeling, Soft Actuator Control, Artificial Muscles, Soft Robotics

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