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1. Hybrid Soft Robots Incorporating Soft and Stiff Elements

   https://doi.org/10.1109/RoboSoft54090.2022.9762183  

   Arachchige, Dimuthu D. ; Godage, Isuru S. ( April 2022 , IEEE 5th International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft))

   Soft robots are inherently compliant and have a strong potential to realize human-friendly and safe robots. Despite continued research highlighting the potential of soft robots, they remain largely confined to laboratory settings. In this work, inspired by spider monkeys' tails, we propose a hybrid soft robot (HSR) design. We detail the design objectives and methodology to improve the controllable stiffness range and achieve independent stiffness and shape control. We extend the curve parametric approach to obtain a kinematic model of the proposed HSR. We experimentally demonstrate that the proposed HSR has about 100% stiffness range increase than a previous soft robot design with identical physical dimensions. In addition, we empirically map HSR's bending shape-pressure-stiffness and present an application example-a soft robotic gripper-to demonstrate the decoupled nature of stiffness and shape variations. Experimental results show that proposed HSR can be successfully 

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2. Soft Ultrathin Electronics Innervated Adaptive Fully Soft Robots

   https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201706695  

   Wang, Chengjun ; Sim, Kyoseung ; Chen, Jin ; Kim, Hojin ; Rao, Zhoulyu ; Li, Yuhang ; Chen, Weiqiu ; Song, Jizhou ; Verduzco, Rafael ; Yu, Cunjiang ( February 2018 , Advanced Materials)

   Soft robots outperform the conventional hard robots on significantly enhanced safety, adaptability, and complex motions. The development of fully soft robots, especially fully from smart soft materials to mimic soft animals, is still nascent. In addition, to date, existing soft robots cannot adapt themselves to the surrounding environment, i.e., sensing and adaptive motion or response, like animals. Here, compliant ultrathin sensing and actuating electronics innervated fully soft robots that can sense the environment and perform soft bodied crawling adaptively, mimicking an inchworm, are reported. The soft robots are constructed with actuators of open‐mesh shaped ultrathin deformable heaters, sensors of single‐crystal Si optoelectronic photodetectors, and thermally responsive artificial muscle of carbon‐black‐doped liquid‐crystal elastomer (LCE‐CB) nanocomposite. The results demonstrate that adaptive crawling locomotion can be realized through the conjugation of sensing and actuation, where the sensors sense the environment and actuators respond correspondingly to control the locomotion autonomously through regulating the deformation of LCE‐CB bimorphs and the locomotion of the robots. The strategy of innervating soft sensing and actuating electronics with artificial muscles paves the way for the development of smart autonomous soft robots.

    

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3. Soft bremsstrahlung

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.99.076018  

   Weinberg, Steven ( April 2019 , Physical Review D)
4. Soft Steps: Exploring Quadrupedal Locomotion With Modular Soft Robots

   https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3289156  

   Arachchige, Dimuthu D. K. ; Perera, Dulanjana M. ; Mallikarachchi, Sanjaya ; Huzaifa, Umer ; Kanj, Iyad ; Godage, Isuru S. ( January 2023 , IEEE Access)
5. Highly Dynamic Bistable Soft Actuator for Reconfigurable Multimodal Soft Robots

   https://doi.org/10.1002/admt.202201259  

   Patel, Dinesh K. ; Huang, Xiaonan ; Luo, Yichi ; Mungekar, Mrunmayi ; Jawed, M. Khalid ; Yao, Lining ; Majidi, Carmel ( November 2022 , Advanced Materials Technologies)

   Matching the rich multimodality of natural organisms, i.e., the ability to transition between crawling and swimming, walking and jumping, etc., represents a grand challenge in the fields of soft and bio‐inspired robotics. Here, a multimodal soft robot locomotion using highly compact and dynamic bistable soft actuators is achieved. These actuators are composed of a prestretched membrane sandwiched between two 3D printed frames with embedded shape memory alloy (SMA) coils. The actuator can swiftly transform between two oppositely curved states and generate a force of 0.3 N through a snap‐through instability that is triggered after 0.2 s of electrical activation with an input power of 21.1 ± 0.32W(i.e., electrical energy input of 4.22 ± 0.06J. The consistency and robustness of the snap‐through actuator response is experimentally validated through cyclical testing (580 cycles). The compact and fast‐responding properties of the soft bistable actuator allow it to be used as an artificial muscle for shape‐reconfigurable soft robots capable of multiple modes of SMA‐powered locomotion. This is demonstrated by creating three soft robots, including a reconfigurable amphibious robot that can walk on land and swim in water, a jumping robot (multimodal crawler) that can crawl and jump, and a caterpillar‐inspired rolling robot that can crawl and roll.

    

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