Liquid Crystal Soft Actuators and Robots toward Mixed Reality

Liquid crystals (LCs) are soft but smart materials that can adjust its chemical or physical properties in response to various external stimuli. Using these materials to construct soft actuators and robots, referred as LC actuators and robots, is expected to replace current machinery part, obtaining lighter and smaller equipment with adjustable and complex functions. Especially, combining these LC actuator and robots with existing virtual reality and augmented reality technologies will produce a new world of mixed reality (MR) with the visual, auditory, and somatosensory interaction. In this review, the recent work on responsive LC actuators and robots is introduced, emphasizing on their potentials in haptic use. By discussing their programmable control via suitable stimuli, the LC actuators and robots are summarized for mechanical outputs, environmental mimic, and fine-tuning of surface texture and roughness. It is anticipated that the continuous development on LC actuators and robots will accelerate the MR technology toward practical application.     

A New Strategy of Discretionarily Reconfigurable Actuators Based on Self-Healing Elastomers for Diverse Soft Robots

Actuators have shown great promise in many fields including soft robotics. Since reconfiguration allows actuators to change their actuation mode, it is considered a key characteristic for new-generation adaptive actuators. However, it remains a challenge to design simple and universal methods to fabricate actuators that can be reconfigured to allow diverse actuation modes. Here, a macroscopically discretionary healing-assembly strategy to fabricate reconfigurable soft actuators based on intrinsic self-healing poly(dimethylglyoxime-urethane) (PDOU) elastomers is developed. The PDOU elastomers with different degrees of crosslinking show different responsiveness to solvents, and are seamlessly healed. Crosslinked and non-crosslinked PDOU elastomers as building units are healing-assembled into actuators/robots with diverse actuation behaviors. Notably, the assembled actuators/robots are readily reprogrammed to exhibit multiple actuation modes by simply tailoring and reassembling without any external stimuli. This work paves a new, simple, powerful, and universal method to construct sophisticated soft robots.     

Mechanically Versatile Soft Machines through Laminar Jamming

There are two major structural paradigms in robotics: soft machines, which are conformable, durable, and safe; and traditional rigid robots, which are fast, precise, and capable of applying high forces. Here, the paradigms are bridged by enabling soft machines to behave like traditional rigid robots on command. This task is accomplished via laminar jamming, a structural phenomenon in which a laminate of compliant strips becomes strongly coupled through friction when a pressure gradient is applied, causing dramatic changes in mechanical properties. Rigorous analytical and finite element models of laminar jamming are developed, and jamming structures are experimentally characterized to show that the models are highly accurate. Then jamming structures are integrated into soft machines to enable them to selectively exhibit the stiffness, damping, and kinematics of traditional rigid robots. The models allow jamming structures to efficiently meet arbitrary performance specifications, and the physical demonstrations illustrate how to construct systems that can behave like either soft machines or traditional rigid robots at will, such as continuum manipulators that can rapidly have joints appear and disappear. This study aims to foster a new generation of mechanically versatile machines and structures that cannot simply be classified as “soft” or “rigid.”     

3D Knitting for Pneumatic Soft Robotics

Soft robots adapt passively to complex environments due to their inherent compliance, allowing them to interact safely with fragile or irregular objects and traverse uneven terrain. The vast tunability and ubiquity of textiles has enabled new soft robotic capabilities, especially in the field of wearable robots, but existing textile processing techniques (e.g., cut-and-sew, thermal bonding) are limited in terms of rapid, additive, accessible, and waste-free manufacturing. While 3D knitting has the potential to address these limitations, an incomplete understanding of the impact of structure and material on knit-scale mechanical properties and macro-scale device performance has precluded the widespread adoption of knitted robots. In this work, the roles of knit structure and yarn material properties on textile mechanics spanning three regimes–unfolding, geometric rearrangement, and yarn stretching–are elucidated and shown to be tailorable across unique knit architectures and yarn materials. Based on this understanding, 3D knit soft actuators for extension, contraction, and bending are constructed. Combining these actuation primitives enables the monolithic fabrication of entire soft grippers and robots in a single-step additive manufacturing procedure suitable for a variety of applications. This approach represents a first step in seamlessly “printing” conformal, low-cost, customizable textile-based soft robots on-demand.     

Magnetic Assembly of Soft Robots with Hard Components

This paper describes the modular magnetic assembly of reconfigurable, pneumatically actuated robots composed of soft and hard components and materials. The soft components of these hybrid robots are actuators fabricated from silicone elastomers using soft lithography, and the hard components are acrylonitrile–butadiene–styrene (ABS) structures made using 3D printing. Neodymium–iron–boron (NdFeB) ring magnets are embedded in these components to make and maintain the connections between components. The reversibility of these magnetic connections allows the rapid reconfiguration of these robots using components made of different materials (soft and hard) that also have different sizes, structures, and functions; in addition, it accelerates the testing of new designs, the exploration of new capabilities, and the repair or replacement of damaged parts. This method of assembling soft actuators to build soft machines addresses some limitations associated with using soft lithography for the direct molding of complex 3D pneumatic networks. Combining the self‐aligning property of magnets with pneumatic control makes it possible for a teleoperator to modify the structures and capabilities of these robots readily in response to the requirements of different tasks.     

Soft Robotic-Adapted Multimodal Sensors Derived from Entirely Intrinsic Self-Healing and Stretchable Cross-Linked Networks

Flexible sensing technologies that play a pivotal role in endowing robots with detection capabilities and monitoring their motions are impulsively desired for intelligent robotics systems. However, integrating and constructing reliable and sustainable flexible sensors with multifunctionality for robots remains an everlasting challenge. Herein, an entirely intrinsic self-healing, stretchable, and attachable multimodal sensor is developed that can be conformally integrated with soft robots to identify diverse signals. The dynamic bonds cross-linked networks including the insulating polymer and conductive hydrogel with good comprehensive performances are designed to fabricate the sensor with prolonged lifespan and improved reliability. Benefiting from the self-adhesiveness of the hydrogel, strong interfacial bonding can be formed on various surfaces, which promotes the conformable integration of the sensor with robots. Due to the ionic transportation mechanism, the sensor can detect strain and temperature based on piezoresistive and thermoresistive effect, respectively. Moreover, the sensor can work in triboelectric mode to achieve self-powered sensing. Various information can be identified from the electrical signals generated by the sensor, including hand gestures, soft robot crawling motions, a message of code, the temperature of objects, and the type of materials, holding great promise in the fields of environmental detection, wearable devices, human-machine interfacing, and robotics.     

Selective Stiffening in Soft Actuators by Triggered Phase Transition of Hydrogel-Filled Elastomers

Nature has inspired a new generation of robots that not only imitate the behavior of natural systems but also share their adaptability to the environment and level of compliance due to the materials used to manufacture them, which are typically made of soft matter. In order to be adaptable and compliant, these robots need to be able to locally change the mechanical properties of their soft material-based bodies according to external feedback. In this work, a soft actuator that embodies a highly controllable thermo-responsive hydrogel and changes its stiffness on direct stimulation is proposed. At a critical temperature, this stimulation triggers the reversible transition of the hydrogel, which locally stiffens the elastomeric containment at the targeted location. By dividing the actuator into multiple sections, it is possible to control its macroscopic behavior as a function of the stiffened sections. These properties are evaluated by arranging three actuators into a gripper configuration used to grasp objects. The results clearly show that the approach can be used to develop soft actuators that can modify their mechanical properties on-demand in order to conform to objects or to exert the required force.     

Spiral-Shape Fast-Moving Soft Robots

Soft robots typically exhibit limited agility due to inherent properties of soft materials. The structural design of soft robots is one of the key elements to improve their mobility. Inspired by the Archimedean spiral geometry in nature, here, a fast-moving spiral-shaped soft robot made of a piezoelectric composite with an amorphous piezoelectric vinylidene fluoride film and a layer of copper tape is presented. The soft robot demonstrates a forward locomotion speed of 76 body length per second under the first-order resonance frequency and a backward locomotion speed of 11.26 body length per second at the third-order resonance frequency. Moreover, the multitasking capabilities of the soft robot in slope climbing, step jumping, load carrying, and steering are demonstrated. The soft robot can escape from a relatively confined space without external control and human intervention. An untethered robot with a battery and a flexible circuit (a payload of 1.665 g and a total weight of 1.815 g) can move at an absolute speed of 20 mm s⁻¹ (1 body length per second). This study opens a new generic design paradigm for next-generation fast-moving soft robots that are applicable for multifunctionality at small scales.     

Biomimetic Color Changing Anisotropic Soft Actuators with Integrated Metal Nanowire Percolation Network Transparent Heaters for Soft Robotics

To add more functionalities and overcome the limitation in conventional soft robots, highly anisotropic soft actuators with color shifting function during actuation is demonstrated for the first time. The electrothermally operating soft actuators with installed transparent metal nanowire percolation network heater allow easy programming of their actuation direction and instantaneous visualization of temperature changes through color change. Due to the unique direction dependent coefficient of thermal expansion mismatch, the suggested actuator demonstrates a highly anisotropic and reversible behavior with very large bending curvature (2.5 cm^?1) at considerably low temperature (≈40 °C) compared to the previously reported electrothermal soft actuators. The mild operating heat condition required for the maximum curvature enables the superior long‐term stability during more than 10 000 operating cycles. Also, the optical transparency of the polymer bilayer and metal nanowire percolation network heater allow the incorporation of the thermochromic pigments to fabricate color‐shifting actuators. As a proof‐of‐concept, various color‐shifting biomimetic soft robots such as color‐shifting blooming flower, fluttering butterfly, and color‐shifting twining tendril are demonstrated. The developed color‐shifting anisotropic soft actuator is expected to open new application fields and functionalities overcoming the limitation of current soft robots.     

Plasmonic‐Assisted Graphene Oxide Films with Enhanced Photothermal Actuation for Soft Robots

Carbon‐based materials are widely used as light‐driven soft actuators relying on their thermal desorption or expansion. However, applying a passive layer in such film construction greatly limits the actuating efficiency, e.g., bending amplitude and speed. In this work, a dual active layer strengthened bilayer composite film made of graphene oxide (GO)–polydopamine (PDA)–gold nanoparticles (Au NPs)/polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is developed. In this film, the conventional passive layer is replaced by another AuNPs‐enhanced thermal responsive layer. When applying NIR light exposure, the whole film deforms controllably resulting from the water loss in the GO–PDA–Au NPs layer and thermal expansion in the PDMS layer. Benefiting from the dual active bilayer mechanism, the thin film's actuating efficiency is dramatically improved compared with that of conventional methods. Specifically, the bending amplitude is enhanced up to 173%, and the actuating speed is improved to 3.5‐fold. The soft actuator can act as an artificial arm with high actuating strength and can be used as a wireless gripper. Moreover, the film can be designed as soft robots with various locomotion modes including linear, rolling, and steering motions. The developed composite film offers new opportunities for biomimetic soft robotics as well as future applications.     

A Multidirectional Locomotion Light-Driven Soft Crawling Robot

Soft robots based on bionics with multi-freedom and communication abilities have attracted extensive attention in recent years. However, the solutions for soft robots with multidirectional locomotion currently concentrate on complex drive modes and exhibit application unfriendliness. In this work, an untethered multidirectional locomotion light-driven soft crawling robot is proposed with the integration of communication module, which can traverse in four directions with a fixed near-infrared (NIR) light source and is also capable of positioning and perception. Owing to the photothermal response of graphene oxide and ingenious structural design, the critical states of robot deformation can be determined simply by controlling the duration of NIR light, ultimately resulting in different crawling directions. Furthermore, a communication module is integrated into the robot enabling the robot to locate and sense humidity by magnetic coupling. The proposed robot provides an innovative strategy for the design and integration of multidirectional locomotion soft crawling robots, showing great potential in intelligent robots.     

Highly Conductive MXene/PEDOT:PSS-Integrated Poly(N-Isopropylacrylamide) Hydrogels for Bioinspired Somatosensory Soft Actuators

Sophisticated sensing and actuation capabilities of many living organisms in nature have inspired scientists to develop biomimetic somatosensory soft robots. Herein, the design and fabrication of homogeneous and highly conductive hydrogels for bioinspired somatosensory soft actuators are reported. The conductive hydrogels are synthesized by in situ copolymerization of conductive surface-functionalized MXene/Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)/poly(styrenesulfonate) ink with thermoresponsive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) hydrogels. The resulting hydrogels are found to exhibit high conductivity (11.76 S m⁻¹), strain sensitivity (GF of 9.93), broad working strain range (≈560% strain), and high stability after over 300 loading–unloading cycles at 100% strain. Importantly, shape-programmable somatosensory hydrogel actuators with rapid response, light-driven remote control, and self-sensing capability are developed by chemically integrating the conductive hydrogels with a structurally colored polymer. As the proof-of-concept illustration, structurally colored hydrogel actuators are applied for devising light-driven programmable shape-morphing of an artificial octopus, an artificial fish, and a soft gripper that can simultaneously monitor their own motions via real-time resistance variation. This work is expected to offer new insights into the design of advanced somatosensory materials with self-sensing and actuation capabilities, and pave an avenue for the development of soft-matter-based self-regulatory intelligence via built-in feedback control that is of paramount significance for intelligent soft robotics and automated machines.     

Fully Recyclable,Healable, Soft,and Stretchable Dynamic Polymers for Magnetic Soft Robots

Magnetic soft robots capable of wirelessly controlled programmable deformation and locomotion are desirable for diverse applications. Such multi-variable actuation ideally requires a polymer matrix with a well-defined range of softness and stretchability (Young's modulus of 0.1–10 MPa, high stretchability >200%). However, this defined mechanical range excludes most polymer candidates, leaving only a limited number of available polymers (e.g., PDMS, Ecoflex) with covalently cross-linked networks that may lead to non-recyclable robots and further potential threats to environment. Herein, based on the synergistic effects of reduced cross-linking density and intermolecular hydrogen bonding, a dynamic covalent polyimine is newly designed as polymer matrix and magnetic microparticles as fillers, and integrate defined softness and stretchability, full chemical recyclability, rapid room-temperature healability and multimodal actuation into a single magnetic soft robot. The polyimine is soft and stretchable enough to process soft robots in various geometries by simple laser cutting, without the need to pre-design the geometry to suit target scenarios. Through a cyclic depolymerization/repolymerization, this full recycling restores 100% of the robots’ mechanical properties and rapid deformability/mobility to their original level within seconds and heals quickly within minutes when damaged, facilitating ideal cyclic material economy for soft robots in diverse scenarios.     

Bioinspired Soft Robotic Caterpillar with Cardiomyocyte Drivers

Biological soft robots have attracted extensive attention and research because of their superiority in executing designed biomedical missions compared with conventional robots. Here, inspired by the crawling mechanism of snakes and caterpillars, a novel biological soft robot composed of asymmetric claws, a carbon nanotube (CNT)‐induced myocardial tissue layer, and a structural color indicator is presented. The asymmetric claws can assist the whole soft robot to accomplish directional movement during the cardiomyocytes' contraction process. The oriented conduct of the CNT layer can regulate the cardiomyocytes' arrangement and improve their beating capability and the contraction performance. However, the structural color indicator provides a visualized monitoring approach to dynamically and immediately reflect the motion status of the biological soft robots. With these three functional layers, the cardiomyocyte‐driven soft robot can greatly simulate the crawling behavior of a caterpillar. It is demonstrated that by integrating these soft robots in a microfluidic organ‐on‐a‐chip system with multitrack construction, they can run along the tracks and exhibit different running speed based on the stimulus concentrations in the tracks. These features indicate the potential values of the cardiomyocyte‐driven soft robots for providing an effective screening platform for clinical diseases.     

Bioinspired Triboelectric Soft Robot Driven by Mechanical Energy

A sustainable power source is a key technical challenge for practical applications of electrically responsive soft robots, especially the required voltage is over several thousand volts. Here, a practicable new technology, triboelectric soft robot (TESR) system with the primary characteristics of power source from mechanical energy, is developed. At its heart is TESR with bioinspired architectures made of soft-deformable body and two triboelectric adhesion feet, which is driven and accurately controlled through triboelectric effect, while reaching maximum crawling speeds of 14.9 mm s⁻¹ on the acrylic surface. The characteristics of the TESR, including displacement and force, are tested and simulated under the power of a rotary freestanding triboelectric nanogenerator (RF-TENG). Crawling of TESR is successfully realized on different materials surfaces and different angle slopes under the driven of RF-TENG. Furthermore, a real-time visual monitoring platform, in which TESR carries a micro camera to transmit images in a long narrow tunnel, is also achieved successfully, indicating that it can be used for fast diagnosis in an area inaccessible to human beings in the future. This study offers a new insight into the sustainable power source technologies suitable for electrically responsive soft robots and contributes to expanding the applicability of TENGs.     

Recent Development of Jumping Motions Based on Soft Actuators

Drawing inspiration from the jumping motions of living creatures in nature, jumping robots have emerged as a promising research field over the past few decades due to great application potential in interstellar exploration, military reconnaissance, and life rescue missions. Early reviews mainly focused on jumping robots made of lightweight and rigid materials with mechanical components, concentrating on jumping control and stability. Herein, attention is paid to the jumping mechanisms of soft actuators assembled from various soft smarting materials and powered by different stimulus sources. The challenges and prospects of soft jumping actuators are also discussed. It is hoped that this review will contribute to the further development of soft jumping actuators and broaden their practical applications.     

Reversible Elastomer–Fluid Transitions for Metamorphosic Robots

Endowing robots with reversible phase transition ability, especially between elastomer and fluid states, can significantly broaden their functionality and applicability. Limited attempts have been made to realize the reversible elastomer–fluid transition. Existing phase transition materials in robotics have over-hard (≈4 GPa) or over-soft (≈4 kPa) stiffness in the solid states, which should be further investigated to perform more compliant motions. To address these challenges, a reversible elastomer–fluid transition mechanism  enabled by magnetically induced hot melt materials (MIMMs) is presented. The transition principle is explained and material characterizations are conducted. MIMMs-based metamorphosic robots endow self-metamorphosing abilities, such as self-healing, spatial reshaping, self-division/assembly, and additive manufacturability. When interacting with external environments, MIMMs-based robots can perform further multifunctional abilities, such as collaborations for structure repairs, swimming by symbiosis with external objects, flowing through a narrow terrain by transiting to fluid, and working with elastomeric structures for stiffness-variable fluid soft actuators. The proposed elastomer–fluid transitions open a new path for robots to generate more flexible and metamorphosic motions, thereby addressing the cross-phase transformation challenges that soft robots face.     

Robotic Locomotion and Piezo1 Activity Controlled with Novel Liquid Marble-based Soft Actuators

A novel soft actuator is designed, fabricated, and optimized for applied use in soft robotics and biomedical applications. The soft actuator is powered by the expansion and contraction of a graphene-containing and encased liquid marble using the photothermal effect. Unfortunately, conventional liquid marbles are found to be too fragile and prone to cracking and failure for such applications. After experimentation, it is possible to remedy this problem by synthesizing liquid marbles encased with polymeric shells–polymerized in situ–for added mechanical strength and robustness. These marbles are shown to have intrinsic photothermal activity. They are then situated in bimorph-type soft actuators where one side of the actuator has a dramatically different Young's modulus than the other, leading to directional actuation which is successfully demonstrated in multistep walking soft robots. The soft actuators are shown to successfully activate the mechanosensitive Piezo protein in a transfected human cell line with high effectiveness and no toxicity. Overall, the liquid marble-powered soft actuators described here represent a new soft actuation methodology and a novel tool for mechanobiological studies, such as stem cell fate and organoid differentiation.     

Nonlinear disturbance observers for robotic continuum manipulators

Robots are an indispensable part of modern production lines. Usually working in designated areas, they are separated from human workers in order to avoid collisions. A safe collaborative work environment is enabled by so-called soft robots, which constitute a human-friendly alternative to classical rigid industrial robots. However, modeling soft robots proves difficult and results in a lack of accuracy for control tasks. In this contribution, a disturbance observer-based control is proposed in order to improve tracking behavior. In doing so, unknown model errors are considered as disturbances and estimated by an observer. This estimate is used to actively reject the perturbation. Different disturbance observers are designed and implemented for a soft quasi-continuum manipulator, amongst them two nonlinear disturbance observers and two extended state observers. The distinction in the versions of the same observation concept lies in the disturbance dynamics assumption, which is either considered static or as a damped double integrator. All implemented concepts combined with a PD control show superior performance compared to an existing benchmark concept based on PID-like control. Thanks to the modularity of this approach, disturbance observers can be further investigated in combination with other control strategies.     

Soft Actuators and Robots that Are Resistant to Mechanical Damage

This paper characterizes the ability of soft pneumatic actuators and robots to resist mechanical insults that would irreversibly damage or destroy hard robotic systems—systems fabricated in metals and structural polymers, and actuated mechanically—of comparable sizes. The pneumatic networks that actuate these soft machines are formed by bonding two layers of elastomeric or polymeric materials that have different moduli on application of strain by pneumatic inflation; this difference in strain between an extensible top layer and an inextensible, strain‐limiting, bottom layer causes the pneumatic network to expand anisotropically. While all the soft machines described here are, to some extent, more resistant to damage by compressive forces, blunt impacts, and severe bending than most corresponding hard systems, the composition of the strain‐limiting layers confers on them very different tensile and compressive strengths.