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...

Purpose – This article aims to provide details of recent developments in robots that can change shape and self-reconfigure. Design/methodology/approach – Following an introduction, this article first describes some recent developments in shape-changing materials and then considers a...