Highlighted News 

* April issue of Soft Robotics is already online

* The importance of soft robotics is acknowledged in EU publications on industrial human-robot collaboration

* SMART Innovative Training Network is recruiting PhD Students. More information can be found here

* Special issue of the Actuators journal on “Electroactive Polymer Actuators for Soft Robotics II”. Submission deadline: 31 July 2020

* New full podcast episodes are available here

New Videos

* Underwater Snail-o-Bot gets kick from light (Feb 2020)

* Eversion and retraction of a soft robot towards the exploration of coral reefs (Feb 2020)

* Soft machines lab introduces new soft, multifunctional composite (Feb 2020)

* Robotic gripping and handling of seafood (March 2020)

* The gripper guys explain how soft robotics solves for variability (Mar 2020)

* In-hand manipulation with RBO Hands (Apr 2020)

Published Journal

* Related view and review:

• Current advances in soft robotics: Best papers from RoboSoft 2018 (Front. Robot. AI., Apr 2020)

* Soft arm, manipulation, grasping:

• Programmable droplet manipulation by a magnetic-actuated robot (Sci. Adv., Feb 2020)
• Universal SMP gripper with massive and selective capabilities for multiscaled, arbitrarily shaped objects (Sci. Adv., Feb 2020)
• Design and prototyping soft–rigid tendon-driven modular grippers using interpenetrating phase composites materials (Int. J. Robot. Res., Feb 2020)
• Octopus arm-inspired tapered soft actuators with suckers for improved grasping (Soft Robotics, Feb 2020)

* Soft locomotion, compliant locomotion:

• Deformable microswimmer in an external force field (Phys. Rev. Fluids, Mar 2020)
• A 1mm-thick miniatured mobile soft robot with mechanosensation and multimodal locomotion (IEEE RA-L, Apr 2020)

* Soft sensing, artificial skin, electronic skin:

• Sustainable manufacturing of sensors onto soft systems using self-coagulating conductive pickering emulsions (Sci. Robot, Feb 2020)
• CoboSkin: Soft robot skin with variable stiffness for safer human-robot collaboration (IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., March 2020)

* Soft actuator, flexible actuator, compliant actuator:

• Seamless multimaterial 3D liquid-crystalline elastomer actuators for next-generation entirely soft robots (Sci Adv., Feb 2020)
• Geometric confined pneumatic soft–rigid hybrid actuators (Soft Robotics, Feb 2020)
• Varying mechanical compliance benefits energy efficiency of a knee joint actuator (Mechatronics, April 2020)

* Soft robot application:

• Characterization, simulation and control of a soft helical pneumatic implantable robot for tissue regeneration (IEEE T-MRB, Feb 2020)

* Soft robot fabrication, embodied intelligence, morphological computation, morphological change:

• Vertical fibrous morphology and structure-function relationship in natural and biomimetic suction-based adhesion discs (Matter, Feb 2020)
• Additive manufacturing for self-healing soft robots (Soft Robotics, Mar 2020)
• An untethered isoperimetric soft robot (Sci. Robot, Mar 2020)
• Inverse statics optimization for compound tensegrity robots (IEEE RA-L, March 2020)
• Flexoskeleton printing enables versatile fabrication of hybrid soft and rigid robots (Soft Robotics, Apr 2020)
• Model-based pose control of inflatable eversion robot with variable stiffness (IEEE RA-L, Apr 2020)
• Lightweight highly tunable jamming-based composites (Soft Robotics, Apr 2020)

* Soft matter electronics, stretchable electronics:

• Nanofabrication for all-soft and high-density electronic devices based on liquid metal (Nat. Commun., Feb 2020)
• Soft, wireless periocular wearable electronics for real-time detection of eye vergence in a virtual reality toward mobile eye therapies (Sci Adv., Mar 2020)

Popular Articles

• Underwater Snail-o-Bot gets kick from light (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Feb 2020)
• Vertical fibers in the suckerfish’s suction cup-like fin help it hitchhike (Phys.org, Feb 2020)
• The tentacle bot (Harvard News & Events, Feb 2020)
• One indestructible bug in a soft robotic body (ASME, Mar 2020)
• Stanford engineers create shape-changing, free-roaming soft robot (Stanford News, Mar 2020)
• Engineers 3D print soft, rubbery brain implants (MIT News, Mar 2020)
• Liquid metal that floats on water could make transformable robots (NewScientist, Mar 2020)
• Soft robot takes cues from a sea slug’s swimming stroke (Nature Research Highlight, Mar 2020)
• A resilient robotic bug (Advanced Science News, March 2020)
• Thanks to ‘flexoskeletons,’ these insect-inspired robots are faster and cheaper to make (Jacobs School News, Apr 2020),