Fluid-driven and smart material-driven research for soft body robots

Soft robots are featured with safe interaction, good adaptability, and strong flexibility due to their own material composition and structural peculiarities. Nowadays, they are widely used in medical services, agricultural harvesting, disaster relief and rescue, underwater exploration and other fields. This paper provides a summary of soft robotic drive modes and drive materials, and classifies soft robotic drive modes into flexible fluid drive and smart material drive according to whether smart materials are included or not, where flexible fluid drive is illustrated from the three aspects of soft body structure, material and power source. With the development of smart materials, this paper proposes the connection between smart materials and soft robots for the first time, summaries the exposition from the aspects of principle, materials and structure, and finally discusses the soft robot drive and looks forward to its future development.