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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Oct 3, 2025

Fabrication of Soft Pneumatic Network Actuators with Oblique Chambers

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Published on: August 17, 2018

Bistable and Multistable Actuators for Soft Robots: Structures, Materials, and Functionalities.

Yinding Chi¹, Yanbin Li¹, Yao Zhao¹

¹Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA.

Advanced Materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.)

|February 16, 2022

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Researchers explore bistable and multistable structures integrated with soft materials for advanced soft actuators and robots. This work details design principles and applications in locomotion, sensing, and computation.

Keywords:

bistability and multistability soft actuating materials soft actuators soft robots structural designs

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Last Updated: Oct 3, 2025

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Area of Science:

Robotics and Materials Science
Mechanics of Soft Materials

Background:

Bistability and multistability are observed in natural phenomena and everyday objects.
These properties are increasingly harnessed in soft actuators and robots for advanced functionalities.

Purpose of the Study:

To provide an overview of integrating bistable/multistable structures with soft actuating materials.
To discuss design principles and applications in soft robotics.

Main Methods:

Mechanics-guided structural design principles for five categories of bistable elements (1D to 3D) are presented.
Integration of soft actuating materials (fluidic elastomers, stimuli-responsive polymers) with these structures is discussed.

Main Results:

Demonstration of diverse soft bistable and multistable actuators.
Exploration of applications in high-speed locomotion, adaptive sensing, fast grasping, shape reconfiguration, and logic computation.

Conclusions:

The integration of bistable structures and soft materials offers significant potential for next-generation soft actuators and robots.
Future perspectives on challenges and opportunities in this emerging field are considered.