IEEE: P. Glick, S. A. Suresh, D. Ruffatto, M. Cutkosky, M. T. Tolley and A. Parness, “A Soft Robotic Gripper With Gecko-Inspired Adhesive,” in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 903-910, April 2018, doi: 10.1109/LRA.2018.2792688.
This paper covers a gripper that uses a specific kind of polymer that creates adhesion with the item that it is grabbing. Pneumatically actuated, the structure of the arm is able to bend, and the surface of the arm uses van der waals forces to create adhesion.
Course BibliographyL M. Garrad, G. Soter, A. T. Conn, H. Hauser and J. Rossiter, “Driving Soft Robots with Low-Boiling Point Fluids,” 2019 2nd IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft), Seoul, Korea (South), 2019, pp. 74-79, doi: 10.1109/ROBOSOFT.2019.8722812.
This paper describes a method of soft robotic actuation driven by boiling a fluid within a soft body. By increasing the temperature, and thus the pressure, and specifically designing the vessel with different stiffnesses and shapes, the team was able to induce some motion.
Paper Reference: W. Shan, T. Lu and C. Majidi, “Soft-matter composites with electrically tunable elastic rigidity,” Smart Mater. Struct. 22 085005, 2013, doi: 10.1088/0964-1726/22/8/085005
A paper by CMU’s Carmel Majidi, this paper shows off a metal wire/folded sheet encased in a silicone casing. They use both shape memory alloys and shape memory polymers to change the stiffness of the composite material by applying a current.