Purpose This paper aims to get rid of the traditional basic principle of using the motor as the variable stiffness drive source, simplify the structure of the exoskeleton and reduce the quality of the exoskeleton. This paper proposes to use shape memory alloys (SMA) as the variable stiffness...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a range of artificial muscle and soft gripping technologies for robotic applications. Design/methodology/approach – Following a short introduction, this paper first discusses the role of air muscles and other pneumatic actuation...