Although soft-bodied robots show great promise for tasks such as squeezing through tight spaces, it's a bit counterproductive if their soft appendages are moved by hard actuators. A new technology ...

Someday robots could be using the air we breathe for power. Scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), have developed a ...

(Nanowerk Spotlight) The field of soft robotics seeks to create compliant, adaptive actuators that mimic the remarkable abilities of biological systems. Conventional robotic actuators, built from ...

Remember those toys that sprang up into the air after you pushed them down? They're called poppers, and they've inspired an actuator that could one day allow soft-bodied robots to jump across rough ...

When we think of assistive prostheses or braces, we often think of hard and rigid contraptions. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that prosthetic limbs were still being made out of wood. Even devices ...

(Nanowerk News) Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a way to build soft robots that are compact, portable and multifunctional. The advance was made possible by creating ...

Hand rehabilitation research has markedly benefited from the introduction of soft actuators in gloves. However, existing soft rehabilitation glove designs have several limitations in finger movements.