This paper introduces a novel origami-inspired shape-changing robot OSCaR. The objective is to enhance the adaptability of vehicles engaged in ground coverage tasks, such as floor cleaning. The robot exhibits two distinct configurations: it can fold itself for agile navigation through tight spaces, and unfold to cover larger areas efficiently. The folding pattern has a deploy-to-stow ratio of 3 in the width dimension, and a kinematic model is established to simulate the deployment process for the pattern. The hinge design employs rolling contact elements to mitigate collision among the panels, particularly in regions with multiple colinear crease lines. Furthermore, the design exhibits one degree of freedom and features pivots, making it easy to actuate with motors. The system design of the prototype is also presented, including its structure, an embedded hardware system, and upper computer software. The results show that the robot has great adaptability in complex environments.

Soft actuators play an important role in producing motions in soft robots, and dielectric elastomers have shown great promise because of their considerable voltage-induced deformation. In particular, air-filled dielectric elastomer actuators have been well studied, where the air inside provides prestretches to improve the actuation range. This paper proposes a network of inflated dielectric elastomer actuators, interconnected via a chamber, with the advantages to be highly deformable and continuously controllable. Theoretical analyses show that the networked design is able to largely postpone the occurrence of material failures of the actuators, resulting in a large and continuous actuation range for their control. We further carried out experiments for validation, and the results were largely in line with the theoretical predictions. These findings essentially provide insight into developing networked soft actuators, for achieving large actuation capability.

Soft robots, primarily made out of intrinsically soft materials, have flourished greatly in the past decade due to their advantages such as flexibility and adaptability over rigid-bodied robots. A rich repertoire of soft robots designed from intuitive or biomimetic approaches have been developed to provide new solutions for robots. However, these design approaches are limited by the designers' experience and inspiration, and a systematic design methodology for soft robots is still missing. We tackle this issue by mathematically recasting the design problem under the framework of topology optimization problem. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology, in this paper, we develop a pneumatically actuated soft gripper consisting of three fingers, each finger is able to undergo a free travel bending and deliver a grasping force. Hence, each gripper finger is designed as a continuum compliant mechanism to achieve its maximal bending deformation. The proposed soft gripper with complex shape is directly fabricated through 3D printing technology. Experimental results show that the deflected soft finger is able to achieve a 41° free travel bending and generate 0.68N blocked force upon 0.11MPa actuation pressure. This work represents an important step towards the goal of designing soft robots automatically.