Soft Actuators and Sensors: Design, Materials, Processes and Applications
A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Materials Science and Engineering".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 February 2025) | Viewed by 2045
Special Issue Editor
Interests: AFM; thin films; transparent electrodes; inkjet printing; nanocomposite materials
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Unlike traditional rigid robots, soft robots can conduct tasks in unstructured environments. Soft robots have many advantages, such as improved flexibility, lower stiffness, compliance, strong adaptability and reconfigurability, and thus have great potential in applications such as fragile object grasping, medical invasive surgery and human–machine interaction.
Soft actuators and sensors are the key components of soft robots, which are made of soft materials arranged in a certain structure, and can be activated by fluids, heat, electricity, magnets, light, humidity, chemical reactions, etc. This Special Issue mainly focuses on the design, materials, processes and applications of soft actuators and sensors. We welcome the submission of research results on areas including but not limited to:
- Materials and their physical/chemical properties for soft actuators: elastomers, dielectric elastomers (DEs), liquid crystalline elastomers, gels and hydrogels, shape memory polymers (SMPs), shape memory alloys (SMAs), semicrystalline ferroelectric polymers, swelling polymers, electroactive polymers (EAPs), electroactive ceramics, thermoplastic polyurethane elastomers (TPUs), naturally derived materials, materials with volume change and materials with tunable mechanical properties.
- Structure design, modeling, optimization, motion control, multimodal locomotion and different actuation methods.
- Manufacturing methods and processes.
- Different applications, e.g., soft electronics, artificial muscles, wearable devices, haptic devices, soft grippers, medical devices and other novel industrial applications.
The Special Issue invites researchers to publish their original research articles on the platform, to discuss and communicate continuing challenges, opportunities and future directions of next-generation soft actuators.
Prof. Dr. Silvia Schintke
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- soft actuator design
- soft–hard actuators
- soft actuator sensors
- soft robotics
- soft actuation systems
- compliant actuation
- pneumatic soft actuators electroactive polymer actuators
- magnetostrictive actuators
- magnetic soft actuators
- modeling and intelligent control
- control optimization
- advanced manufacturing of soft actuators
- fabric-embedded soft actuators
- soft materials
- robustness
- electroactive polymers
- conducting polymers
- dielectric elastomers
- bio-based eaps
- hybrid eaps, artificial muscles
- hydraulic actuators
- electro active polymers
- polymeric actuators
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