Bioinspired underwater soft robots: from biology to robotics and back

Abstract Soft-bodied marine organisms inspire underwater soft robots. We distill four biological principles that guide robotic design, including locomotion, compliant morphologies and materials, distributed sensing, and adaptive control. We frame a bidirectional loop from biology to robotics and back in which robots act as physical models to probe biological mechanisms that are difficult to isolate in living animals. We further propose a biouniversal design strategy that moves beyond any single organism.