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.
Highlights
Robots have been around for almost 100 years, from the earliest conceptualizations of L Frank Baum, the coining the of the term “robot” by Karel Čapek and the first industrial robots of Pollard and Roselund in the 1930’s [1]
Swarm-based control approaches dominate, with the challenge becoming one of stochastic determinism and prediction of emergent behaviours [12]. This mitigates the challenges of controlling larger multi-degree of freedom (DOF) soft robotics [13] since the individual soft robots can have low DOF
Conventional robotic systems have relied on stored electrical sources, batteries and H2/O2 fuel cells
Summary
Robots have been around for almost 100 years, from the earliest conceptualizations of L Frank Baum, the coining the of the term “robot” by Karel Čapek and the first industrial robots of Pollard and Roselund in the 1930’s [1]. Most robots have been designed and fabricated to a few very defined formulae They are based on the human form (they are humanomimetic [5] robots), copy the functions of animals (they are zoomimetic [6]) or are defined from established mechanical principles derived from industrial revolution. Consideration of toxicity and long-term environmental impact is secondary to the immediate task at hand—many robots employ materials that are toxic to the natural environment The consequence of this toxicity is that any robot released into the environment must be captured and returned for safe recycling or disposal at end-of-life. We will discuss current limitations and routes to realizing a future with ubiquitous soft robotic organisms
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