Pneumatic coding blocks enable programmability of electronics-free fluidic soft robots.

Abstract

Decision-making based on environmental cues is a crucial feature of autonomous systems. Embodying this feature in soft robots poses nontrivial challenges on both hardware and software that can undermine the simplicity and autonomy of such devices. Existing pneumatic electronics-free soft robots have so far mostly been approached by using system fluidic circuit architectures analogous to digital electronics. Instead, here we design dedicated pneumatic coding blocks equivalent to <i>If</i>, <i>If...break</i>, and <i>For</i> software control statements, which are based on the analog nature of nonlinear mechanical components. We demonstrate that we can combine these coding blocks into programs to implement sequences and to control an electronics-free autonomous soft gripper that switches between behaviors based on interactions with the environment. As such, our strategy provides an alternative approach to designing complex behavior in soft robotics that is more reminiscent of how functionalities are also encoded in the body of living systems.