Cianchetti Matteo
The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pontedera, Italy.
Department of Excellence in Robotics and AI, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy.
Front Robot AI. 2021 Nov 17;8:724056. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2021.724056. eCollection 2021.
The soft robotics community is currently wondering what the future of soft robotics is. Therefore, it is very important to identify the directions in which the community should focus its efforts to consolidate its impact. The identification of convincing applications is a priority, especially to demonstrate that some achievements already represent an attractive alternative to current technological approaches in specific scenarios. However, most of the added value of soft robotics has been only theoretically grasped. Embodied Intelligence, being of these theoretical principles, represents an interesting approach to fully exploit soft robotic's potential, but a pragmatic application of this theory still remains difficult and very limited. A different design approach could be beneficial, i.e., the integration of a certain degree of continuous adaptability in the hardware functionalities of the robot, namely, a "flexible" design enabled by hardware components able to fulfill multiple functionalities. In this paper this concept of flexible design is introduced along with its main technological and theoretical basic elements. The potential of the approach is demonstrated through a biological comparison and the feasibility is supported by practical examples with state-of-the-art technologies.
软机器人技术领域目前正在思考软机器人技术的未来走向。因此，明确该领域应集中力量巩固其影响力的方向非常重要。确定有说服力的应用是当务之急，特别是要证明在特定场景中，一些成果已经成为当前技术方法颇具吸引力的替代方案。然而，软机器人技术的大部分附加值仅在理论上有所认识。具身智能作为这些理论原则之一，是充分发挥软机器人潜力的一种有趣方法，但该理论的实际应用仍然困难重重且非常有限。一种不同的设计方法可能会有所助益，即在机器人的硬件功能中融入一定程度的持续适应性，也就是由能够实现多种功能的硬件组件实现的“灵活”设计。本文介绍了这种灵活设计的概念及其主要技术和理论基础元素。通过生物学比较展示了该方法的潜力，并通过采用先进技术的实际例子来支持其可行性。
