In the medical field and in soft robotics, flexible devices are required for safe human interaction, while rigid structures are required to withstand the force application and accuracy in motion. This paper aims at presenting controllable stiffness mechanisms described in the literature for applications with or without shape-locking performances. A classification of the solutions based on their working principle is proposed. The intrinsic properties of these adaptive structures can be modified to change their mechanical characteristics from a geometrical point of view or equivalent elastic properties (with internal mechanisms or with a change in material properties). These solutions are compared quantitatively, based on selected criteria linked to the medical field as the stiffness range, the activation time and the working conditions. Depending on the application and its requirements, the most suitable solution can be selected following the quantitative comparisons. Several applications of these tunable stiffness structures are proposed and illustrated by examples of the literature.

During the last years, great progress was made in material science in terms of concept, design and fabrication of new composite materials with conferred properties and desired functionalities. The scientific community paid particular interest to active soft materials, such as soft actuators, for their potential as transducers responding to various stimuli aiming to produce mechanical work. Inspired by this, materials engineers today are developing multidisciplinary approaches to produce new active matters, focusing on the kinematics allowed by the material itself more than on the possibilities offered by its design. Traditionally, more complex motions beyond pure elongation and bending are addressed by the robotics community. The present review targets encompassing and rationalizing a framework which will help a wider scientific audience to understand, sort and design future soft actuators and methods enabling complex motions. Special attention is devoted to recent progress in developing innovative stimulus-responsive materials and approaches for complex motion programming for soft robotics. In this context, a challenging overview of the new materials as well as their classification and comparison (performances and characteristics) are proposed. In addition, the great potential of soft transducers are outlined in terms of kinematic capabilities, illustrated by the related application. Guidelines are provided to design actuators and to integrate asymmetry enabling motions along any of the six basic degrees of freedom (translations and rotations), and strategies towards the programming of more complex motions are discussed. As a final note, a series of manufacturing methods are described and compared, from molding to 3D and 4D printing. The review ends with a Perspectives section, from material science and microrobotic points of view, on the soft materials’ future and close future challenges to be overcome.

Mechanically responsive materials are promising as next-generation actuators for soft robotics, but have scarce reports on the statistical modeling of the actuation behavior. This research reports on the development and modeling of the photomechanical bending behavior of hybrid silicones mixed with azobenzene powder. The photo-responsive hybrid silicone bends away from the light source upon light irradiation when a thin paper is attached on the hybrid silicone. The time courses of bending behaviors were fitted well with exponential models with a time variable, affording fitting constants at each experimental condition. These fitted parameters were further modeled using the analysis of variance (ANOVA). Cubic models were proposed for both the photo-bending and unbending processes, which were parameterized by the powder ratio and the light intensity. This modeling process allows such photo-responsive materials to be controlled as actuators, and will possibly be effective for engineering mechanically responsive materials.