Soft Robotics

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Overview

Soft robotics investigates how deformable machines can move, manipulate objects, and assist people while adapting to contact and irregular surroundings. Common designs use pneumatic or hydraulic chambers, tendons, dielectric elastomers, and magnetic or shape-changing structures; models range from Cosserat rods and finite-element methods to learned dynamics. Control approaches include model-predictive control, reinforcement learning, visual servoing, and tactile or proprioceptive feedback, evaluated in tasks such as grasping, locomotion, wearable assistance, and medical navigation. A central challenge is balancing accurate, efficient modeling and control with the changing shapes, hysteresis, manufacturing variation, and sim-to-real gaps that make soft robots adaptable in the first place.

Latest papers

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231 papers14 papers in the last four weeks, down 53% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Design and Biomechanical Evaluation of a Lightweight Low-Complexity Soft Bilateral Ankle Exoskeleton

    Feb 20, 2026Josée Mallah, Zakii Javed, Zafer Azak +2Assistive RoboticsSoft Robotics

    Electrical Engineering Division, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB3 0FA, United Kingdom · Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge CB22 5LD, United Kingdom

  2. Snapping Actuators with Asymmetric and Sequenced Motion

    Feb 20, 2026Xin Li, Ye Jin, Mohsen Jafarpour +2Pneumatic ActuationSoft Robotics

  3. Ori-Sense: origami capacitive sensing for soft robotic applications

    Feb 20, 2026Hugo de Souza Oliveira, Xin Li, Mohsen Jafarpour +1Soft RoboticsRobotic Perception

  4. Tendon-Driven Reciprocating and Non-Reciprocating Motion via Snapping Metabeams

    Feb 20, 2026Mohsen Jafarpour, Ayberk Yüksek, Shahab Eshghi +2Soft RoboticsTendon-Driven Actuation

    Department of Functional Morphology and Biomechanics, Zoological Institute, Kiel University, 24118 Kiel, Germany

  5. Design and Characterization of a Dual-DOF Soft Shoulder Exosuit with Volume-Optimized Pneumatic Actuator

    Feb 20, 2026Rui Chen, Domenico Chiaradia, Daniele Leonardis +1Pneumatic ActuationUpper-Limb Exoskeletons

    The authors are with the Institute of Mechanical Intelligence and Department of Excellence in Robotics & AI, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), 56127 Pisa, Italy

  6. Optically Sensorized Electro-Ribbon Actuator (OS-ERA)

    Feb 19, 2026Carolina Gay, Petr Trunin, Diana Cafiso +3Soft RoboticsRobot State Estimation

    C. Gay, P. Trunin, D. Cafiso and L. Beccai are with the Soft BioRobotics and Perception Lab of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Morego 30 16163, Genova, Italy · Y. Xu and M. Taghavi are with the Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, SW7 2BX London, U.K.

  7. 3D-printed Soft Optical sensor with a Lens (SOLen) for light guidance in mechanosensing

    Feb 19, 2026Diana Cafiso, Petr Trunin, Carolina Gay +1Soft Robotics

    Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Soft BioRobotics and Perception, Morego 30, Genoa, 16163, Italy

  8. Physical Human-Robot Interaction for Grasping in Augmented Reality via Rigid-Soft Robot Synergy

    Feb 19, 2026Huishi Huang, Jack Klusmann, Haozhe Wang +9Human-Robot InteractionRobotic Grasping

    Advanced Robotics Centre (ARC), National University of Singapore (NUS), 117608, Singapore. · Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), 138632, Singapore. · Chair of Cognitive Systems, Technical University of Munich (TUM), 80333, Munich. +2

  9. Dynamic Modeling and MPC for Locomotion of Tendon-Driven Soft Quadruped

    Feb 18, 2026Saumya Karan, Neerav Maram, Suraj Borate +1Quadruped LocomotionSoft Robotics

    IIT Gandhinagar, Department of Electrical Engineering, Gujarat, India · Sreenidhi Institute of Science and Technology, Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Telangana, India

  10. Machine Learning Driven Prediction of the Behavior of Biohybrid Actuators

    Feb 18, 2026Michail-Antisthenis Tsompanas, Marco Perez Hernandez, Faisal Abdul-Fattah +9RoboticsSoft Robotics

    Unconventional Computing Laboratory & School of Computing & Creative Technologies, College of Arts, Technology and Environment, University of the West of England, Bristol, BS16 1QY, United Kingdom · School of Computing & Creative Technologies, College of Arts, Technology and Environment, University of the West of England, Bristol, BS16 1QY, United Kingdom · Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), The Barcelona Institute for Science and Technology (BIST), Barcelona, Spain +3

  11. A Soft Wrist with Anisotropic and Selectable Stiffness for Robust Robot Learning in Contact-rich Manipulation

    Feb 16, 2026Steven Oh, Tomoya Takahashi, Cristian C. Beltran-Hernandez +2Soft RoboticsRobotic Manipulation

    OMRON SINIC X Corp., Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan.

  12. Soft Swing-up: Benchmarking Model-Based Optimal Control for Rigid-Soft Underactuated Systems

    Feb 3, 2026Daniele Caradonna, Nikhil Nair, Anup Teejo Mathew +5Robotic ControlModel Predictive Control

    The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy · Department of Excellence in Robotics and AI, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy · Department of Cognitive Robotics, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CN Delft, The Netherlands +3

  13. Tactile Memory with Soft Robot: Robust Object Insertion via Masked Encoding and Soft Wrist

    Jan 27, 2026Tatsuya Kamijo, Mai Nishimura, Nodoka Shibasaki +3Robotic ControlDexterous Manipulation

    OMRON SINIC X Corporation, 5-24-5 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan · The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8654, Japan · Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

  14. Highly Deformable Proprioceptive Membrane for Real-Time 3D Shape Reconstruction

    Jan 20, 2026Guanyu Xu, Jiaqi Wang, Dezhong Tong +1Tactile Sensing3D Reconstruction

    University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA

  15. Soft Pneumatic Grippers: Topology optimization, 3D-printing and Experimental validation

    Nov 24, 2025Prabhat Kumar, Chandra Prakash, Josh Pinskier +2Topology OptimizationMechanism Design

    Department Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. India Institute of Technology Hyderbad, Telangana 502285, India · CSIRO Robotics, Pullenvale, QLD 4069, Australia · Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 2, Delft, 2628CD, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands

  16. Multilaminate piezoelectric polymer actuators for insect-scale softrobots

    Nov 15, 2025Nicholas Gunter, Heiko Kabutz, Alexander Hedrick +1RoboticsSoft Robotics

    Animal Inspired Movement and Robotics Laboratory, Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder

  17. Rapidly Learning Soft Robot Control via Implicit Time-Stepping

    Nov 10, 2025Andrew Choi, Dezhong Tong, Xiaonan HuangRobot Policy LearningRobotics Simulation

    Horizon Robotics, Cupertino, CA, USA · Robotics Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

  18. External Photoreflective Tactile Sensing Based on Surface Deformation Measurement

    Nov 9, 2025Seiichi Yamamoto, Hiroki Ishizuka, Takumi Kawasetsu +6Tactile SensingContact Force Estimation

    Graduate School of Engineering Science, The University of Osaka, Toyonaka 560-0043, Japan

  19. A Quantitative Comparison of Centralised and Distributed Reinforcement Learning-Based Control for Soft Robotic Arms

    Nov 4, 2025Linxin Hou, Qirui Wu, Zhihang Qin +3RL ControlRobotic Policy Evaluation

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore · Department of Computer Science, National University of Singapore · Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore

  20. Koopman Model Predictive Control of An Origami-Inspired Soft Exoskeleton for Knee Rehabilitation

    Oct 13, 2025Junxiang Wang, Han Zhang, Zehao Wang +3Robotic ControlModel Predictive Control

    School of Automation and Intelligent Sensing, Institute of Medical Robotics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Key Laboratory of System Control and Information Processing, Ministry of Education of China, Shanghai 200240, China · Seventh Affiliated Hospital, SunYat-sen University, Shenzhen 510275, China

  21. Soft yet Effective Robots via Holistic Co-Design

    Apr 20, 2025Maximilian Stölzle, Niccolò Pagliarani, Francesco Stella +6Hardware-Software Co-DesignSoft Robotics

    Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 02139, MA, USA. · Cognitive Robotics, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 2, Delft, 2628 CD, Netherlands. · Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 02139, MA, USA. +4