Preface

The field of robotics has changed dramatically over the last few decades. While a number of successful industrial applications have been developed based on conventional theories and technologies, it has been broadly agreed that radical changes of design and control strategies are necessary to substantially increase the application niche of robotics. Soft Robotics research is expected to play an important role in this context. In contrast to the conventional robotics research, Soft Robotics investigations typically focus on the issues related to soft and deformable materials, and a number of innovative robotic technologies have been proposed in previous explorations. For example, the use of elastic material provides substantial increase of efficiency and flexibility in robot locomotion and manipulation; the use of passive mechanical dynamics leads to rapid and maneuverable behavior control in robotic systems; and the use of soft materials increases the sensitivity and recognition performance in active sensing, for example. While most of ongoing research projects in Soft Robotics explore technological challenges, such as robot designs and control of soft robots that employ unconventional materials, as some of them are also included in this special issue, the implications of this research field cannot be underestimated. Essentially by dealing with soft and deformable bodies in robotic systems, we are automatically recruiting the powerful conceptual principles such as self-organization of mechanical structures and self-stabilization of body motions, which have not necessarily been profitably exploited in the conventional robotics research. Furthermore, the investigations of soft and smart materials are also expected to bring our robotics research much beyond where we have been so far. By employing unconventional smart materials, we expect our robots to become significantly more flexible and versatile, and ultimately, we envision all the way up to self-assembling and self-replicating systems, i.e., those which have been possible only in the simulation so far. Although it is not completely obvious how this field will evolve toward these fascinating challenges in the future, it is difficult (at least for us) to see how robotics could provide such substantial impacts without Soft Robotics research from where we are now.