Soft Machines: Elastic Energy Storage Enables Rapid and Programmable Actuation in Soft Machines (Adv. Funct. Mater. 1/2020)

Abstract

In article number 1906603, Ramses V. Martinez, Aniket Pal, and Debkalpa Goswami have developed a new class of entirely soft robots capable of recreating high-power and high-speed motions using stored elastic energy. Taking inspiration from the Chameleon's tongue strike, a pre-stressed pneumatic soft robot is capable of expanding five times its own length, catching a live beetle, and retrieving it in just 120 milliseconds.