These materials give robots organic characteristics, replicating the way muscles work and allowing robots to move and perform human-like tasks that are impossible for old-school metallic machines.
Engineer and Scientist Tim Chin explains why he thinks soft robotics and agriculture go hand in hand “A specific application of soft robotics that interested me is agriculture.,” he explains. “Most automatic solutions for harvesting only operate on large sturdy crops. There are a few mechanisms for collecting smaller crops, but many are violent and tend to damage the plant in the process. There have been advances by companies such as Soft Robotics Inc, that incorporate soft elements into their robotic grippers. These grippers still depend on the object of interest to have some sturdiness.”
“Such predicaments led to a research project I participated in. The projects goal was to explore the autonomous picking of light fragile berries, specifically raspberries,” he continued. ” A unique gripper was desired for that task. Considering the fragility of raspberries, this was an opportune problem to solve with soft robotics.”
The usefulness of a robot that can carry boxes around a warehouse and self-repair if it’s damaged is clear. It is not obvious what the use case for a robot with feelings would be, even if many human inventions did not come from a utilitarian drive. There are also ethical challenges, not to mention the possibility of humanity being taken over by machines.
The growing interest in soft robots comes from the new possibilities offered by these systems to cope with problems that cannot be addressed by robots built from rigid bodies. Many innovative solutions have been developed in recent years to design soft components and systems. They all demonstrate how soft robotics development is closely dependent on advanced manufacturing processes.
Light autonomous robots is the answer to soil compaction in the future
This review aims at giving an insight on the current state of the art in soft robotics manufacturing. It first puts in light the elementary components that can be used to develop soft actuators, whether they use fluids, shape memory alloys, electro-active polymers or stimuli-responsive materials. Other types of elementary components, such as soft smart structures or soft-rigid hybrid systems, are then presented.
The second part of this review deals with the manufacturing methods used to build complete soft structures. It includes molding, with possibly reinforcements and inclusions, additive manufacturing, thin-film manufacturing, shape deposition manufacturing, and bonding. The paper conclusions sums up the pros and cons of the presented techniques, and open to developing topics such as design methods for soft robotics and sensing technologies
