Origami structures are highly demanded for engineering applications. Using origami folding to design and actuate mechanisms and machines offers attractive opportunities. In this paper, we design a crawling robot driven by pneumatic foldable actuators (PFAs) based on Miura-ori, according to the parallel foldable structure and different control patterns, which can perform different movements. The PFA inspired from Miura-ori is composed of a folding part, transition part, and sealing part, made by flexible materials and a paper skeleton. This actuator can obtain a large deformation by folding under negative pressure due to its own characteristics, and the relationship between deformation and pressure is analyzed. According to the different folding and unfolding times of left and right actuators, the crawling robot can perform both linear and turning movements. The speed of the robot is about 5 mm/s and it can turn at a speed of about 15°/s. The crawling robot uses the ability of the foldable structure to cope with the challenges of different environments and tasks.

The wearable force feedback glove provides a promising solution for enhancing immersion during teleoperation. In this study, a lightweight five-finger exoskeleton force feedback glove (EFFG) was designed, enabling driving force detection and flexible force feedback. This wireless prototype weighs only 278 g. The glove features a bionic structure and optimized linkage length to ensure operator safety while providing extensive coverage of the finger working space. Moreover, a detailed illustration of the kinematic and dynamic analyses, as well as the circuit structure, was presented. With this prototype as the basis, an isomorphic teleoperation system is designed to achieve force feedback during teleoperation. Concurrently, a driving force-based impedance controller was proposed to enable smooth and precise force feedback. Finally, the performance of the EFFG prototype was evaluated in both unconstrained and constrained environments, demonstrating that the proposed glove is lightweight, capable of detecting driving force, and provides flexible force feedback.

Varifocal lenses have been promptly developed but show many shortcomings in the area of artificial pupils, such as rigid frames, prestress and large structures. This paper presents an entirely soft varifocal lens to adapt to the increasingly ingenious soft robotic structures. Such a varifocal lens is mainly composed of a PDMS frame, a liquid dielectric and a pair of flexible electrodes. The stable focal length of the lens varies from 533.5 to 49.4 mm by applying DC voltages from 3 to 12 kV. Surprisingly, a novel ‘jump’ phenomenon is found in the varifocal lens at the moment of power-on. Then, the varifocal effects are studied under alternating voltages with a square wave, a triangle wave or a sine wave. The varifocal range remains basically stable after repeated cycles under alternating voltages. As the frequency increases, the range of the focal length change also gradually decreases and becomes more stable. As a result, the stable focal length of the lens is able to vary as wide as from 690.3 to 24.5 mm by applying square waveform voltages from 1 to 8 kV at a frequency of 10 Hz. The proposed lens is simple, thin and flexible, which is expected to develop the artificial eyes of soft robots.

This article investigates the realization of achieving safe and flexible assembly under manual teleoperation. A wearable positioning system for teleoperation assembly tasks was designed to provide great flexibility and operability. The 6D coordinate information of the hand was reconstructed with a wireless locator in real-time, and three control methods were conducted. In contrast to the traditional impedance methods, an integrated position/force control method which takes the operator’s posture as the desired position was proposed, thus achieving the combination of the initiative of the operator and the compliance of the impedance control. Additionally, the method possesses the capacity of eliminating collision force caused by hand jitters and misoperation. Finally, the system was evaluated in a representative application of teleoperated peg-in-hole insertion. Additionally, a challenging task was tested to illustrate advantages of the proposed method. The results show that the position trailing is precise enough for a teleoperation system, and the proposed integrated position/force control method approaches outperformed position control and impedance in terms of precision and operability.