State of the Art and Key Technology of Soft-Bodied Robots

As a new type of robot, soft-bodied robots have wide potential applications in the fields of exploration and exploitation, rescue, medical service. This paper presents a review on the current research status, which, on the basis of functional characteristics, can be classified as mobile robots, including peristaltic motion, rolling motion, omega-type motion and jumping motion, and operation robots. Moreover, the key technologies of soft-bodied robots, mainly including actuators, active materials, physical modeling, control strategies and manufacture processes, are summarized. Finally, some bottlenecks and research directions on soft-bodied robots in future are discussed as well.

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