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Updated: Jan 19, 2026

Manufacturing, Control, and Performance Evaluation of a Gecko-Inspired Soft Robot
Published on: June 10, 2020
Towards an ontology for soft robots: what is soft?
Kevin Chubb1, Damon Berry, Ted Burke
1School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Technological University Dublin, Kevin Street, Dublin 8, Ireland. Address correspondence to: Greenway Hub, TU Dublin, Grangegorman, Dublin 8, Ireland.
Abstract:
The advent of soft robotics represents a profound change in the forms robots will take in the future. However, this revolutionary change has already yielded such a diverse collection of robots that attempts at defining this group do not reflect many existing 'soft' robots. This paper aims to address this issue by scrutinising a number of descriptions of soft robots arising from a literature review with the intention of determining a coherent meaning for soft. We also present a classification of existing soft robots to initiate the development of a soft robotic ontology. Finally, discrepancies in prescribed ranges of Young's modulus, a frequently used criterion for the selection of soft materials, are explained and discussed. A detailed visual comparison of these ranges and supporting data is also presented.
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