Opportunities and Challenges in Soft Robotics

Soft Robotics has emerged as a new and rapidly evolving interdisciplinary research area. This technology can provide a wide range of opportunities to create machines with unprecedented mechanical functionalities, as well as robots that are intrinsically safe to interact with human beings. However, the potential of this technology has not been fully realized as it is still a significant challenge to design, model and control such robots. This special issue, building on a workshop co-organized by the guest editors at the 2019 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Montreal, Canada, focuses on recent advancements in soft robotics. The set of accepted papers highlights the opportunities and critical challenges of this field. Successfully realized soft robotics technologies could have a major impact on numerous industries and human activities (1900166, 1900171). Indeed, soft robotics offers the potential to be much more conformable and adaptable through novel sensing (1900080, 1900171, 1900178, 2000002; see Figure 1 A,B) and actuation mechanisms (1900177, 1900163; see Figure 1 C,D). As a result, these robots will be able to demonstrate significantly higher dexterity and manipulation capabilities than their traditional rigid counterparts. For example, grippers/gloves with embedded soft sensors can empower service robots to manipulate a broad range of objects (1900080; see Figure 1 A) or enable computational proprioception and task identification (2000002; see Figure 1 B). Bio-inspired soft robots can also significantly benefit search and rescue and exploratory operations as they can potentially negotiate across much more complicated terrestrial and aquatic terrains with soft bodies (1900183, 1900154, 1900186; see Figure 1 E,F).