A review on Soft Robotics: Modeling, Control and Applications in Human-Robot interaction

Nature inspires engineers to build robots with soft and flexible materials. Advancements in technology have opened doors for designing compliant and soft robots. Such robots find applications in designing soft surgical tools, soft wearable, implantable devices, etc. which can be used in collaboration with humans to execute a variety of non-conventional tasks. These robots have the ability to achieve any kinematic configurations through deformations. Unlike conventional robots, soft robots interact with an unknown environment with improved dexterity. However, this comes at the cost of increased complexity within existing modeling frameworks which motivated researchers to come up with specialized modeling techniques for soft robots. When a reasonable model is available, the next challenge for soft robots is to design a suitable control law to achieve some desired performance. This article gives some insights into soft robots with a focus on existing control methodologies. It also discusses the state of the art: biological inspirations, modeling, simulation, actuation methods, control and applications in human-robot interaction.