Conventional robots typically move by moving rigid pieces relative to one another — think of a robotic hand where rigid bars rotate at joints. In other words, conventional robots have a small number of “degrees of freedom” — the angle of bending of the joint of a robot hand would be one degree of freedom, for example. Soft robots, on the other hand, have many degrees of freedom: they can bend and deform into lots of different configurations. )Because of this, they often display continuum-like behaviour, similar to what is seen in the movement of natural organisms such as worms and octopuses. These robots offer great promise in many fields, from soft instruments for minimally invasive surgery to shape changing airfoils for increased flight control. One of the particularly difficult challenges in soft robotics is to design systems that are flat at rest but can rapidly transform to an arbitrary three dimensional shape when activated. Recently, Emmanuel Siéfert and co-workers developed baromorphs— thin, flexible sheets which can be air inflated (“pneumatically activated”) into a pre-programmed target shape.
Baromorphs: Shape Shifting by Inflating
