News & Comment

To protect our cultural heritage, it is essential that we understand the material properties of artefacts. Detailed information can be obtained on complex and often highly degraded materials using synchrotron X-ray analysis, aiding our ability to design effective stabilization and remediation strategies.

Materials and technologies used to make soft robots that can safely interact with humans are avidly explored. A wealth of applications are in reach for soft robots but a number of challenges remain.

‘Push-button’ or fully automated manufacturing would enable the production of robots with zero intervention from human hands. Realizing this utopia requires a fundamental shift from a sequential (design–materials–manufacturing) to a concurrent design methodology.

The field of soft wearable robotics offers the opportunity to wear robots like clothes to assist the movement of specific body parts or to endow the body with functionalities. Collaborative efforts of materials, apparel and robotics science have already led to the development of wearable technologies for physical therapy. Optimizing the human–robot system by human-in-the-loop approaches will pave the way for personalized soft wearable robots for a variety of applications.

Soft robots promise solutions for a wide range of applications that cannot be achieved with traditional, rigid-component robots. A key challenge is the creation of robotic structures that can vary their stiffness at will, for example, by using antagonistic actuators, to optimize their interaction with the environment and be able to exert high forces.

Soft small robots offer the opportunity to non-invasively access human tissue to perform medical operations and deliver drugs; however, challenges in materials design, biocompatibility and function control remain to be overcome for soft robots to reach the clinic.