Source | Fast-moving soft electronic fish
My journey began with a paper from the Spring ’21 bibliography. This paper discusses the various technologies used to create a self-powered soft fish that is able to move quickly and work in various environments.
Li, Tiefeng, Guorui Li, Yiming Liang, Tingyu Cheng, Jing Dai, Xuxu Yang, Bangyuan Liu, et al. “Fast-Moving Soft Electronic Fish.” Science Advances, April 2017. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1602045.
Root | An integrated design and fabrication strategy for entirely soft, autonomous robots
When I began looking for the root paper, I narrowed my search by looking at titles that seemed broad yet related to the applications that had been presented in the source paper. This paper goes into great detail about an implementation that allowed a soft robot to operate untethered through microfluidic logic, allowing more complex operations.
Wehner, M., Truby, R., Fitzgerald, D. et al. An integrated design and fabrication strategy for entirely soft, autonomous robots. Nature 536, 451–455 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature19100
Related | CeFlowBot: A Biomimetic Flow-Driven Microrobot that Navigates under Magneto-Acoustic Fields
The final paper introduces a new technique that allows for easier fabrication with built in functions through a process called bubble casting. The paper acknowledges past implementations using other actuation methods but present a more streamlined fabrication process. It is interesting to see the inspiration from the root paper in particular, as a primary goal is to keep the soft component untethered.
Mohanty, Sumit, Aniruddha Paul, Pedro M. Matos, Jiena Zhang, Jakub Sikorski, and Sarthak Misra. “CeFlowBot: A Jones, Trevor J., Etienne Jambon-Puillet, Joel Marthelot, and P.-T. Brun. “Bubble Casting Soft Robotics.” Nature 599, no. 7884 (November 2021): 229–33. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04029-6.