Over the past decade, soft actuators have received enormous interest for potential applications in artificial muscles, soft grippers, wearable devices, minimally invasive surgery robots, and medical rehabilitation devices due to their safety, interactivity, and adaptability resulting from their intrinsic soft bodies or compliant structures. However, to meet the increasing demands of real-time feedback and closed-loop control in complicated scenarios, perception is essential for autonomous and intelligent soft actuators. Herein, recent advances in soft actuators with integrated sensing function are investigated to provide an understanding of the state-of-the-art in this field. Typical sensing technologies for perceptive soft actuators are categorized, described, and their pros and cons are discussed. Furthermore, perceptive soft actuators based on different actuation mechanisms are highlighted. Finally, current challenges and future perspectives toward perceptive soft actuators are proposed and analyzed, with the aim of providing a guide for researchers to design next-generation intelligent soft actuators with integrated sensing capability. 

Endowing actuators with sensing capability: Recent progress on perceptive soft actuators

Natural earthworm with ability of loosening soils that favors sustainable agriculture has inspired a worldwide interests in the design of intelligent actuators. Given the inability to carry heavy loads and uncontrolled deformation, the vast majority of actuators can only perform simple tasks by bending, contraction, or elongation. Herein, we present a degradable actuator with ability of deforming in desired ways, which successfully mimics the burrowing activities of earthworms to loosen soils with increased soil porosity by digging, grabbing, and lifting the soil when it receives rains. Such a scarifying actuator is made of degradable cellulose acetate and uncrosslinked polyacrylamideviaswelling-photopolymerizing method. The water absorption of polyacrylamidein moisture conditions causes a rapid and remarkable bending. Such a mechanical bending can be controlled in specific areas of the cellulose acetate film if polyacrylamide is polymerized in a patterned way, so as to generate complicated deformations of the whole cellulose acetate. Patterning polyacrylamide within cellulose acetate is achieved based on reversible surface protection by means of pen writing, rather than the traditional masking techniques.The water-induced deformation of programmable cellulose-based actuators is well preserved in soil, which is appropriate for promoting the rain diffusion as well as the root breath. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

A Programmable Actuator as Synthetic Earthworm.

Temperature and rate-dependent plastic deformation mechanism of carbon nanotube fiber: Experiments and modeling

Advances in artificial intelligence technology bring a rising demand on stimuli responsive actuating materials and soft actuators. By the virtue of easy deformation and mechanical resilience, polymers with unique properties like shape‐memory, electro/magneto‐active, and thermal/humidity/chemical‐responsiveness have emerged as promising candidates for soft robotics. Damage tolerance or a degree of self‐healing ability improves soft robots endowed with such materials longevity, and provides safeguards for the function and potentially reduce costs. The combination of stimuli‐responsive actuation and self‐healing function involves elaborate supramolecular chemical and physical structure designs, being a challenging topic within the field of soft robotics and thus intriguing wide research interests. This review aims to discuss some highlights in convenient combination of stimuli‐responsive micro‐nanostructures and dynamic bonds chemistry within last 5 years, that further give the actuators recovery of mechanic and function, and improved comprehensive properties. Through a review of the most remarkable paradigms, the order organization of dynamic bonds with liquid crystal mesogenic units, functional micro‐nanofillers, hierarchical gradient interfaces, etc. are outlined. Finally, the perspectives and main challenges of self‐healable actuators are summarized. It is anticipated that this review will provide scientists with insights and guidance for the future innovative research in this field.

Self‐healing polymers for soft actuators and robots

Soft underwater swimming robots actuated by smart materials have unique advantages in exploring the ocean, such as low noise, high flexibility, and friendly environment interaction ability. However, most of them typically exhibit limited swimming speed and flexibility due to the inherent characteristics of soft actuation materials. The actuation method and structural design of soft robots are key elements to improve their motion performance. Inspired by the muscle actuation and swimming mechanism of natural fish, a fast-swimming soft robotic fish actuated by a bionic muscle actuator made of dielectric elastomer is presented. The results show that by controlling the two independent actuating units of a biomimetic actuator, the robotic fish can not only achieve continuous C-shaped body motion similar to natural fish but also have a large bending angle (maximum unidirectional angle is about 40°) and thrust force (peak thrust is about 14 mN). In addition, the coupling relationship between the swimming speed and actuating parameters of the robotic fish is established through experiments and theoretical analysis. By optimizing the control strategy, the robotic fish can demonstrate a fast swimming speed of 76 mm/s (0.76 body length/s), which is much faster than most of the reported soft robotic fish driven by nonbiological soft materials that swim in body and/or caudal fin propulsion mode. What's more, by applying programmed voltage excitation to the actuating units of the bionic muscle, the robotic fish can be steered along specific trajectories, such as continuous turning motions and an S-shaped routine. This study is beneficial for promoting the design and development of high-performance soft underwater robots, and the adopted biomimetic mechanisms, as well as actuating methods, can be extended to other various flexible devices and soft robots.

Fast-Swimming Soft Robotic Fish Actuated by Bionic Muscle.

Water-responsive (WR) materials, due to their controllable mechanical response to humidity without energy actuation, have attracted lots of attention to the development of smart actuators. WR material-based smart actuators can transform natural humidity to a required mechanical motion and have been widely used in various fields, such as soft robots, micro-generators, smart building materials, and textiles. In this paper, the development of smart actuators based on different WR materials has been reviewed systematically. First, the properties of different biological WR materials and the corresponding actuators are summarized, including plant materials, animal materials, and microorganism materials. Additionally, various synthetic WR materials and their related applications in smart actuators have also been introduced in detail, including hydrophilic polymers, graphene oxide, carbon nanotubes, and other synthetic materials. Finally, the challenges of the WR actuator are analyzed from the three perspectives of actuator design, control methods, and compatibility, and the potential solutions are also discussed. This paper may be useful for the development of not only soft actuators that are based on WR materials, but also smart materials applied to renewable energy.

Development and challenges of smart actuators based on water-responsive materials.

Cell models can express a variety of cell information, including mechanical properties, electrical properties, and chemical properties. Through the analysis of these properties, we can fully understand the physiological state of cells. As such, cell modeling has gradually become a topic of great interest, and a number of cell models have been established over the last few decades. In this paper, the development of various cell mechanical models has been systematically reviewed. First, continuum theoretical models, which were established by ignoring cell structures, are summarized, including the cortical membrane droplet model, solid model, power series structure damping model, multiphase model, and finite element model. Next, microstructural models based on the structure and function of cells are summarized, including the tension integration model, porous solid model, hinged cable net model, porous elastic model, energy dissipation model, and muscle model. What’s more, from multiple viewpoints, the strengths and weaknesses of each cell mechanical model have been analyzed in detail. Finally, the potential challenges and applications in the development of cell mechanical models are discussed. This paper contributes to the development of different fields, such as biological cytology, drug therapy, and bio-syncretic robots.

A Review of the Development and Challenges of Cell Mechanical Models

Advancement in adhesion technology has improved the development of wall-climbing robots. But there are still some challenges in the optimization of high adhesion strength bioinspired adhesives. Most of the traditional wall-climbing robot feet use vacuum suction and magnetic suction, which require smooth contact surfaces and magnetic permeability respectively, and their application scenarios are greatly limited. Therefore, new biomimetic adsorption methods need to be developed. Adhesives in air, inspired by geckos and spiders and other climbing animals in nature, adhere to the opposite surfaces using van der Waals forces. The biofiber-dried adhesives have a tree-like hierarchy: on the surface of the animal’s foot has a thin film of arrays of microfibers, each is divided into smaller arrays of submicron fibers. These nanosized fibril can bind tightly to opposite surfaces to induce van der Waals interactions. The van der Waals forces cause these nanosized fibril arrays to bind tightly to surfaces. Bionic studies based on gecko and spider adhesion mechanism has become a fierce research subject in the past few years. Previous studies have confirmed that finer contact structures produce higher adhesion. The influence of tip shape on the performance of adhesives of single fiber and fiber array is also a focus of research. In this work, in order to enhance the adhesion of biomimetic materials, patterned surfaces with micro-columns with different tip shapes are prepared by lithography and micromolding methods. We measured their normal adhesion and compared with flat contact surface. Micro pattern surface was found to be better than flat surface smooth. Different shape has a significant effect on adhesive force. A prestressing force of adhesive force and dependency has been identified and that is a key to obtain the adhesion force, which can provide the possibility to expand the application scenarios of wall-climbing robots and exists many potential applications from wall-climbing robots to bionic patches.

Design, fabrication and characterization of gecko inspired micro-fibrillar adhesive materials for wall climbing robots

Generation of a human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC, DVSi001-A) with a heterozygous mutation in KRAS (A209T).

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Development and challenges of smart actuators based on water-responsive materials.

A Review of the Development and Challenges of Cell Mechanical Models

Design, fabrication and characterization of gecko inspired micro-fibrillar adhesive materials for wall climbing robots

Generation of a human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC, DVSi001-A) with a heterozygous mutation in KRAS (A209T).