Untethered, High-load Soft Gripping Robots:A Review

Abstract

Due to the limitation of soft materials, fabrication, and key components, most soft robots have low load capacity and can not carry the hardware system for control and power. Therefore, they have to be tied to the external hardware through hoses and wires, which severely limits the operation scope and application fields of soft robots. Among many soft robots, the soft gripping robots have developed rapidly, mainly including two categories: One is the soft end effector, which mainly cooperate with manipulators, underwater robots, UAVs, and humans to complete the gripping operation; the other is movable soft grippers that have both a gripping function and a movement function, which realize the ingenious fusion of their own gripping structure and movement function. Aiming at the common topic of untethered optimization and high-load in the field of soft robotics, this paper focuses on the soft gripping robots with broad application prospects. The remarkable achievements and shortcomings in the development of soft gripping robots are analyzed from the aspects of untethered actuators, system integration, and load improvement. This paper also systematically summarizes the development technology and main challenges of untethered high-load soft gripping robots, providing a reference for the development direction and performance improvement of soft gripping robots, and promoting soft robots into the field of practical applications.