Skip to Content

984 Results Found

  • Review
  • Open Access
47 Citations
10,305 Views
28 Pages

1 November 2022

In recent years, the field of soft robotics has gained much attention by virtue of its aptness to work in certain environments unsuitable for traditional rigid robotics. Along with the uprising field of soft robotics is the increased attention to sof...

  • Article
  • Open Access
95 Citations
18,770 Views
23 Pages

Soft Pneumatic Actuators for Rehabilitation

  • Guido Belforte,
  • Gabriella Eula,
  • Alexandre Ivanov and
  • Silvia Sirolli

26 May 2014

Pneumatic artificial muscles are pneumatic devices with practical and various applications as common actuators. They, as human muscles, work in agonistic-antagonistic way, giving a traction force only when supplied by compressed air. The state of the...

  • Review
  • Open Access
340 Citations
47,814 Views
26 Pages

Soft Robotics: A Review of Recent Developments of Pneumatic Soft Actuators

  • James Walker,
  • Thomas Zidek,
  • Cory Harbel,
  • Sanghyun Yoon,
  • F. Sterling Strickland,
  • Srinivas Kumar and
  • Minchul Shin

10 January 2020

This paper focuses on the recent development of soft pneumatic actuators for soft robotics over the past few years, concentrating on the following four categories: control systems, material and construction, modeling, and sensors. This review work se...

  • Review
  • Open Access
13 Citations
14,866 Views
35 Pages

18 December 2024

This review will examine the rapidly growing field of soft robotics, with a special emphasis on soft robotic actuators and their applications in bioengineering. Bioengineering has increasingly utilized soft robotics due to their mechanical adaptabili...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
836 Views
23 Pages

Actuator Selection and Control of an Array of Electromagnetic Soft Actuators

  • Hussein Zolfaghari,
  • Nafiseh Ebrahimi,
  • Xaq Pitkow and
  • Mohammadreza Davoodi

17 September 2025

Electromagneticsoft actuator arrays (ESAAs) combine compliance with fast, controllable actuation and scalability, providing a promising foundation for the development of interconnected soft actuator arrays inspired by the structure and function of bi...

  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
3,307 Views
17 Pages

Design of Under-Actuated Soft Adhesion Actuators for Climbing Robots

  • Zhipeng Liu,
  • Linsen Xu,
  • Xingcan Liang and
  • Jinfu Liu

28 July 2022

Since climbing robots mainly rely on adhesion actuators to achieve adhesion, robust adhesion actuators have always been the challenge of climbing robot design. A novel under-actuated soft adhesion actuator (USAA) proposed in this paper for climbing r...

  • Article
  • Open Access
8 Citations
3,984 Views
17 Pages

Effect of Segment Types on Characterization of Soft Sensing Textile Actuators for Soft Wearable Robots

  • Ayse Feyza Yilmaz,
  • Fidan Khalilbayli,
  • Kadir Ozlem,
  • Hend M. Elmoughni,
  • Fatma Kalaoglu,
  • Asli Tuncay Atalay,
  • Gökhan Ince and
  • Ozgur Atalay

The use of textiles in soft robotics is gaining popularity because of the advantages textiles offer over other materials in terms of weight, conformability, and ease of manufacture. The purpose of this research is to examine the stitching process use...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
2,763 Views
21 Pages

8 June 2024

Traditional underwater rigid robots have some shortcomings that limit their applications in the ocean. In contrast, because of their inherent flexibility, soft robots, which have gained popularity recently, offer greater adaptability, efficiency, and...

  • Review
  • Open Access
12 Citations
5,483 Views
22 Pages

Gelatin Soft Actuators: Benefits and Opportunities

  • Sandra Edward and
  • Holly M. Golecki

31 January 2023

Soft robots are being developed as implantable devices and surgical tools with increasing frequency. As this happens, new attention needs to be directed at the materials used to engineer these devices that interface with biological tissues. Biocompat...

  • Article
  • Open Access
24 Citations
5,628 Views
21 Pages

Evaluation of Fiber-Reinforced Modular Soft Actuators for Individualized Soft Rehabilitation Gloves

  • Shota Kokubu,
  • Yuanyuan Wang,
  • Pablo E. Tortós Vinocour,
  • Yuxi Lu,
  • Shaoying Huang,
  • Reiji Nishimura,
  • Ya-Hsin Hsueh and
  • Wenwei Yu

9 March 2022

Applying soft actuators to hand motion assist for rehabilitation has been receiving increasing interest in recent years. Pioneering research efforts have shown the feasibility of soft rehabilitation gloves (SRGs). However, one important and practical...

  • Article
  • Open Access
25 Citations
4,641 Views
17 Pages

Modeling and Analysis of a Composite Structure-Based Soft Pneumatic Actuators for Soft-Robotic Gripper

  • Ming Yu,
  • Wenwen Liu,
  • Jian Zhao,
  • Yanyan Hou,
  • Xuewu Hong and
  • Hongjie Zhang

27 June 2022

Soft pneumatic actuators are extensively used in soft robots, and their bending angles and kinematic rules at different pressures play a crucial role in practical applications. This investigation aims to model the bending angle and motion of a new ty...

  • Review
  • Open Access
21 Citations
8,806 Views
26 Pages

Bioinspired Stimuli-Responsive Materials for Soft Actuators

  • Zhongbao Wang,
  • Yixin Chen,
  • Yuan Ma and
  • Jing Wang

Biological species can walk, swim, fly, jump, and climb with fast response speeds and motion complexity. These remarkable functions are accomplished by means of soft actuation organisms, which are commonly composed of muscle tissue systems. To achiev...

  • Feature Paper
  • Review
  • Open Access
208 Citations
24,393 Views
21 Pages

An Overview of Novel Actuators for Soft Robotics

  • Pinar Boyraz,
  • Gundula Runge and
  • Annika Raatz

16 August 2018

In this systematic survey, an overview of non-conventional actuators particularly used in soft-robotics is presented. The review is performed by using well-defined performance criteria with a direction to identify the exemplary and potential applicat...

  • Article
  • Open Access
37 Citations
16,366 Views
28 Pages

Conductive Fabric Heaters for Heat-Activated Soft Actuators

  • Mark Cartolano,
  • Boxi Xia,
  • Aslan Miriyev and
  • Hod Lipson

21 January 2019

We examine electrically conductive fabrics as conductive heaters for heat-activated soft actuators. We have explored various fabric designs optimized for material properties, heat distribution and actuation/de-actuation characteristics of the soft ac...

  • Article
  • Open Access
11 Citations
4,070 Views
11 Pages

Performance Optimization of Polymer Fibre Actuators for Soft Robotics

  • Ivan D. Rukhlenko,
  • Syamak Farajikhah,
  • Charles Lilley,
  • Andre Georgis,
  • Maryanne Large and
  • Simon Fleming

14 February 2020

Analytical modeling of soft pneumatic actuators constitutes a powerful tool for the systematic design and characterization of these key components of soft robotics. Here, we maximize the quasi-static bending angle of a soft pneumatic actuator by opti...

  • Article
  • Open Access
21 Citations
8,411 Views
14 Pages

Soft Controllable Carbon Fibre-based Piezoresistive Self-Sensing Actuators

  • Min Pan,
  • Chenggang Yuan,
  • Hastha Anpalagan,
  • Andrew Plummer,
  • Jun Zou,
  • Junhui Zhang and
  • Chris Bowen

30 August 2020

Soft robots and devices exploit deformable materials that are capable of changes in shape to allow conformable physical contact for controlled manipulation. While the use of embedded sensors in soft actuation systems is gaining increasing interest, t...

  • Review
  • Open Access
20 Citations
5,216 Views
15 Pages

Review on Research Progress of Hydraulic Powered Soft Actuators

  • Hu Shi,
  • Kun Tan,
  • Boyang Zhang and
  • Wenqiao Liu

29 November 2022

Soft actuators have received extensive attention in robotics and smart device applications due to their distinctive dexterity and compliance. Among them, hydraulic soft actuators play an important role in the area because they have much higher specif...

  • Article
  • Open Access
26 Citations
7,581 Views
15 Pages

Improving the Actuation Speed and Multi-Cyclic Actuation Characteristics of Silicone/Ethanol Soft Actuators

  • Boxi Xia,
  • Aslan Miriyev,
  • Cesar Trujillo,
  • Neil Chen,
  • Mark Cartolano,
  • Shivaniprashant Vartak and
  • Hod Lipson

28 July 2020

The actuation of silicone/ethanol soft composite material-actuators is based on the phase change of ethanol upon heating, followed by the expansion of the whole composite, exhibiting high actuation stress and strain. However, the low thermal conducti...

  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
6,999 Views
10 Pages

Magnetically Assisted Bilayer Composites for Soft Bending Actuators

  • Sung-Hwan Jang,
  • Seon-Hong Na and
  • Yong-Lae Park

12 June 2017

This article presents a soft pneumatic bending actuator using a magnetically assisted bilayer composite composed of silicone polymer and ferromagnetic particles. Bilayer composites were fabricated by mixing ferromagnetic particles to a prepolymer sta...

  • Review
  • Open Access
14 Citations
5,993 Views
26 Pages

10 November 2022

Interest in soft actuators has increased enormously in the last 10 years. Thanks to their compliance and flexibility, they are suitable to be employed to actuate devices that must safely interact with humans or delicate objects or to actuate bio-insp...

  • Article
  • Open Access
1,723 Views
13 Pages

Damage Prediction for Integrated DEAP and MRE Soft Actuators

  • Jakub Bernat,
  • Jakub Kołota,
  • Piotr Gajewski,
  • Agnieszka Marcinkowska,
  • Maciej Komosinski and
  • Szymon Szczęsny

4 June 2024

Soft robotics is a hot scientific topic in areas such as medicine and medical care, implantology, haptic technologies, and the design of various flexible structures. Integrated actuators (DEAP and MRE) are characterized by special functionality and a...

  • Article
  • Open Access
8 Citations
3,968 Views
17 Pages

Design and Characterization of Soft Fabric Omnidirectional Bending Actuators

  • Kyungjoon Lee,
  • Khulan Bayarsaikhan,
  • Gabriel Aguilar,
  • Jonathan Realmuto and
  • Jun Sheng

14 March 2024

Soft robots, inspired by biological adaptability, can excel where rigid robots may falter and offer flexibility and safety for complex, unpredictable environments. In this paper, we present the Omnidirectional Bending Actuator (OBA), a soft robotic a...

  • Perspective
  • Open Access
49 Citations
9,597 Views
11 Pages

Biohybrid Actuators for Soft Robotics: Challenges in Scaling Up

  • Phillip Won,
  • Seung Hwan Ko,
  • Carmel Majidi,
  • Adam W. Feinberg and
  • Victoria A. Webster-Wood

30 September 2020

Living systems have evolved to survive in a wide range of environments and safely interact with other objects and organisms. Thus, living systems have been the source of inspiration for many researchers looking to apply their mechanics and unique cha...

  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
4,162 Views
16 Pages

Fabric Inflatable Soft Actuators for Soft Wearable Devices: The MOSAR Case

  • Juana-Mariel Dávila-Vilchis,
  • Juan Carlos Ávila-Vilchis,
  • Adriana Herlinda Vilchis-González,
  • Luis Adrián Zúñiga-Avilés and
  • Juan Manuel Jacinto-Villegas

28 September 2022

This paper addresses the design, fabrication and control of Fabric Inflatable Soft Actuators (FISAs) for driving Soft Wearable Devices (SWD) for rehabilitation or assistance tasks. FISAs are integrated by a set of pneumatic chambers made of 200D TPU-...

  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
2,924 Views
16 Pages

3 April 2024

Through soft robotics, flexible structures confer an elevated degree of protection and safety in usage, as well as precision and reliability. Using theoretical models while combining different types of soft components opens a wide variety of possibil...

  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
2,208 Views
14 Pages

24 May 2024

High-performance electroactive polymer actuators with large bending, fast response, and high durability have gained attention in the development of micromanipulators and multifunctional bionic soft robots. Herein, we developed high-performance electr...

  • Article
  • Open Access
22 Citations
5,459 Views
15 Pages

A Modular Soft Gripper with Combined Pneu-Net Actuators

  • Xinjie Zhang,
  • Shouyi Yu,
  • Jianlong Dai,
  • Ayobami Elisha Oseyemi,
  • Linlin Liu,
  • Ningyu Du and
  • Fangrui Lv

13 April 2023

Soft Pneumatic-Network (Pneu-Net) Actuators (SPAs) have been used extensively in making soft grippers, due to their simple driving forms and large bending deformation. However, the capabilities of the regular SPAs in complex soft gripping application...

  • Review
  • Open Access
4 Citations
2,503 Views
33 Pages

Hysteresis Modeling of Soft Pneumatic Actuators: An Experimental Review

  • Jesús de la Morena,
  • Francisco Ramos and
  • Andrés S. Vázquez

27 June 2025

Hysteresis is a nonlinear phenomenon found in many physical systems, including soft viscoelastic actuators, where it poses significant challenges to their application and performance. Consequently, developing accurate hysteresis models is essential f...

  • Article
  • Open Access
253 Views
22 Pages

Vacuum-Driven 3D Printable Soft Actuators with Foldable Contraction Capabilities

  • Caiyang E,
  • Jianming Li,
  • Bin Wang,
  • Danfang Guo and
  • Qiping Xu

28 February 2026

In nature, structures such as earwig wings and mimosa leaves exhibit remarkable folding and unfolding capabilities. Inspired by these biological mechanisms, this work investigates soft foldable and torsional actuators based on Kresling crease pattern...

  • Review
  • Open Access
11 Citations
11,163 Views
29 Pages

A Review of the Applications and Challenges of Dielectric Elastomer Actuators in Soft Robotics

  • Qinghai Zhang,
  • Wei Yu,
  • Jianghua Zhao,
  • Chuizhou Meng and
  • Shijie Guo

27 January 2025

As an electrically driven artificial muscle, dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) are notable for their large deformation, fast response speed, and high energy density, showing significant potential in soft robots. The paper discusses the working pr...

  • Article
  • Open Access
14 Citations
2,717 Views
19 Pages

Incremental Machine Learning for Soft Pneumatic Actuators with Symmetrical Chambers

  • Yuriy Kozhubaev,
  • Elena Ovchinnikova,
  • Ivanov Viacheslav and
  • Svetlana Krotova

5 June 2023

Soft robotics is a specialized field of robotics that focuses on the design, manufacture, and control of robots made of soft materials, as opposed to those made of rigid links. One of the primary challenges for the future use of continuous or hyper-r...

  • Article
  • Open Access
28 Citations
9,273 Views
14 Pages

Fiber Embroidery of Self-Sensing Soft Actuators

  • Steven Ceron,
  • Itai Cohen,
  • Robert F. Shepherd,
  • James H. Pikul and
  • Cindy Harnett

Natural organisms use a combination of contracting muscles and inextensible fibers to transform into controllable shapes, camouflage into their surrounding environment, and catch prey. Replicating these capabilities with engineered materials is chall...

  • Review
  • Open Access
32 Citations
6,663 Views
20 Pages

Review of Soft Actuators Controlled with Electrical Stimuli: IPMC, DEAP, and MRE

  • Jakub Bernat,
  • Piotr Gajewski,
  • Jakub Kołota and
  • Agnieszka Marcinkowska

28 January 2023

Soft actuators have been developed for a variety of applications, including soft grippers, artificial muscles, wearables, tactile devices, and medical devices. In this review, we will discuss a group of chemical materials and their robotic applicatio...

  • Technical Note
  • Open Access
2 Citations
2,573 Views
13 Pages

Reducing Actuators in Soft Continuum Robots and Manipulators

  • Mohamed Shoani,
  • Mohamed Najib Ribuan,
  • Ahmad Athif Mohd Faudzi and
  • Shahrol Mohamaddan

29 December 2022

Soft continuum robots and manipulators (SCRaMs) are elongated structures that can be used in many applications, such as exploration, inspection, and minimally invasive surgery. Multi-segment SCRaMs employ numerous actuators to perform their tasks. Th...

  • Article
  • Open Access
6 Citations
3,367 Views
12 Pages

SMA Wire Use in Hybrid Twisting and Bending/Extending Soft Fiber-Reinforced Actuators

  • Seyedreza Kashef Tabrizian,
  • Fovel Cedric,
  • Seppe Terryn and
  • Bram Vanderborght

28 March 2024

Soft fiber-reinforced actuators have demonstrated significant potential across various robotics applications. However, the actuation motion in these actuators is typically limited to a single type of motion behavior, such as bending, extending, and t...

  • Review
  • Open Access
40 Citations
8,330 Views
23 Pages

12 January 2023

In recent years, the emergence of low-dimensional carbon-based materials, such as carbon dots, carbon nanotubes, and graphene, together with the advances in materials science, have greatly enriched the variety of flexible and stretchable electronic d...

  • Review
  • Open Access
1 Citations
2,051 Views
23 Pages

Alginate Sphere-Based Soft Actuators

  • Umme Salma Khanam,
  • Hyeon Teak Jeong,
  • Rahim Mutlu and
  • Shazed Aziz

5 June 2025

Alginate hydrogels offer distinct advantages as ionically crosslinked, biocompatible networks that can be shaped into spherical beads with high compositional flexibility. These spherical architectures provide isotropic geometry, modularity and the ca...

  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
4,539 Views
12 Pages

Modeling and Fabrication of Soft Actuators Based on Fiber-Reinforced Elastomeric Enclosures

  • Zhi Chen,
  • Aicheng Zou,
  • Zhantian Qin,
  • Xingguo Han,
  • Tianming Li and
  • Shengkai Liu

9 June 2021

Unlike rigid actuators, soft actuators can easily adapt to complex environments. Understanding the relationship between the deformation of soft actuators and external factors such as pressure would enable rapid designs based on specific requirements,...

  • Article
  • Open Access
13 Citations
5,521 Views
14 Pages

Detachable Soft Actuators with Tunable Stiffness Based on Wire Jamming

  • Long Bai,
  • Hao Yan,
  • Jiafeng Li,
  • Jiefeng Shan and
  • Penghao Hou

1 April 2022

The integration of variable stiffness materials and structures into soft robots is a popular trend, allowing soft robots to switch between soft and rigid states in different situations. This concept combines the advantages of rigid mechanisms and sof...

  • Article
  • Open Access
23 Citations
8,391 Views
14 Pages

9 February 2023

Soft actuators are essential to soft robots and can also be used with rigid-bodied robots. This paper is focused on methods for improving the applicability of origami-inspired soft pneumatic actuators (OSPA). Our method for rapidly fabricating OSPA i...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
2,495 Views
17 Pages

Soft Gripping Fingers Made of Multi-Stacked Dielectric Elastomer Actuators with Backbone Strategy

  • Armin Jamali,
  • Robert Knoerlein,
  • Dushyant Bhagwan Mishra,
  • Seyed Alireza Sheikholeslami,
  • Peter Woias and
  • Frank Goldschmidtboeing

Soft grippers, a rapidly growing subfield of soft robotics, utilize compliant and flexible materials capable of conforming to various shapes. This feature enables them to exert gentle yet, if required, strong gripping forces. In this study, we elabor...

  • Article
  • Open Access
23 Citations
5,493 Views
21 Pages

Design of Guided Bending Bellows Actuators for Soft Hand Function Rehabilitation Gloves

  • Dehao Duanmu,
  • Xiaojun Wang,
  • Xiaodong Li,
  • Zheng Wang and
  • Yong Hu

25 November 2022

This study developed a soft pneumatic glove actuated by elliptical cross-sectional guided bending bellows to augment finger-knuckle rehabilitation for patients with hand dysfunction. The guided bending bellows actuators (GBBAs) are made of thermoplas...

  • Article
  • Open Access
29 Citations
6,896 Views
12 Pages

3D Printing of Silicone Elastomers for Soft Actuators

  • Jiachen Li,
  • Shengpeng Wu,
  • Wei Zhang,
  • Kaiqi Ma and
  • Guoqing Jin

18 July 2022

A procedure for 3D printing of silicone elastomers with a direct ink writing (DIW) process has demonstrated great potential in areas as diverse as flexible electronics, medical devices, and soft robotics. In this report, we propose a comprehensive gu...

  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
3,101 Views
14 Pages

Quasi-Static Modeling Framework for Soft Bellow-Based Biomimetic Actuators

  • Kelvin HoLam Heung,
  • Ting Lei,
  • Kaixin Liang,
  • Jiye Xu,
  • Joonoh Seo and
  • Heng Li

Soft robots that incorporate elastomeric matrices and flexible materials have gained attention for their unique capabilities, surpassing those of rigid robots, with increased degrees of freedom and movement. Research has highlighted the adaptability,...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2,013 Views
12 Pages

Development and Integration of Carbon–Polydimethylsiloxane Sensors for Motion Sensing in Soft Pneumatic Actuators

  • Ke Ma,
  • Sihuan Wu,
  • Yuquan Zheng,
  • Maosen Shao,
  • Jie Zhang,
  • Jianing Wu and
  • Jinxiu Zhang

28 July 2024

Drawing inspiration from the intricate soft structures found in nature, soft actuators possess the ability to incrementally execute complex tasks and adapt to dynamic and interactive environments. In particular, the integration of sensor data feedbac...

  • Article
  • Open Access
34 Citations
7,023 Views
14 Pages

Strategies to Control Performance of 3D-Printed, Cable-Driven Soft Polymer Actuators: From Simple Architectures to Gripper Prototype

  • Viacheslav Slesarenko,
  • Seiji Engelkemier,
  • Pavel I. Galich,
  • Dmitry Vladimirsky,
  • Gregory Klein and
  • Stephan Rudykh

1 August 2018

The following is a study of the performance of soft cable-driven polymer actuators produced by multimaterial 3D printing. We demonstrate that the mechanical response of the polymer actuator with an embedded cable can be flexibly tuned through the tar...

  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
4,846 Views
13 Pages

11 December 2020

Template-based and additive manufacturing techniques have demonstrated some fabrication routes for creating pneumatic soft actuators. However, as the complexity and capability of the actuators continue to develop, the limitations of these approaches...

  • Article
  • Open Access
25 Citations
6,450 Views
18 Pages

16 February 2022

The paper proposes a novel data-driven approximation kinematic (DAK) model to estimate the shape and opening level of a PneuNets soft gripper in relation to the applied pressure signal. The model offers suitable capabilities for implementing in real-...

  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
2,965 Views
14 Pages

4 November 2023

Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) offer robust, high-energy-density solutions for soft robotics. The proposed end effector consists of three spring roll configuration DEAs, each acting as a robotic finger, using a 3M VHB-F9473PC adhesive membrane...

  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
2,292 Views
19 Pages

28 July 2024

This study introduces a novel modular soft actuator designed for an anthropomorphic robotic finger that addresses the need for adaptive behavior and precise joint-angle control. The key innovation is its modular design, which enables independent pres...

of 20