Robots Are Going Soft

摘要

Robots made exclusively of hard materials prove their worth every day in industrial applications, excelling at repetitive, physically demanding and dangerous tasks that human counterparts cannot take on. Some robotics providers, however, want to steer the design and construction of these machines in a new direction. Driven by robotic use cases in healthcare and coopera-tive human assistance applications, designers have begun to develop less rigid, more mechanically compliant robots. This new class of machines is constructed of soft materials engi-neered to mimic properties of soft biological tissue, matching its compliance, elasticity and low density.