Research development of soft manipulator: A review

The development of robotic interaction is becoming an increasing topic. The excellent grasp ability of low safety and fragile objects will greatly solve the complex labour of people. Rigid actuation have made significant progress for manufacturing and automation assembly, but it lacks of excellent interaction ability for humans and unstructured environments. Soft manipulator is the basic part of man-machine safety cooperation, which can make up for the deficiency. This paper describes the current research status of soft manipulator, driving methods, structures of soft manipulator and principles. Then, we specially show the joint fluid-elastic pneumatic drive, which enables control bending of different joints of the fingers. A detailed classification and principle description of intelligent materials is made for the flexible hands application. In addition, the principle of two new driving modes: biological driving and gas-liquid driving are presented. The performance of different driving modes is compared in detail, and the advantages and disadvantages of different pneumatic driving modes are listed. Finally, we make some prediction for the application prospect of soft manipulator in the future. The practical application and key problems of soft manipulator are summarised endly.