Soft Robotics: Academic Insights and Perspectives Through Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Soft robotics is of growing interest in the robot community as well as in public media, and there is an increase in the quality and quantity of publications related to this topic. To formally elaborate this growth, we have used a bibliometric analysis to evaluate the publications in the field from 1990 to 2017 based on the Science Citation Index Expanded database. We present a detailed overview and discussion based on keywords, citation, h-index, year, journal, institution, country, author, and review articles. The results show that the United States takes the leading position in this research field, followed by China and Italy. Harvard University has the most publications, high average number of citations per publication and the highest h-index. IEEE Transactions on Robotics ranks first among the top 20 academic journals publishing articles related to this field, whereas Soft Robotics holds the top position in journals categorized with “ROBOTICS.” Actuator, fabrication, control, material, sensing, simulation, bionics, stiffness, modeling, power, motion, and application are the hot topics of soft robotics. Smart materials, bionics, morphological computation, and embodiment control are expected to contribute to this field in the future. Application and commercialization appear to be the initial driving force and final goal for soft robots.

On-Board Pneumatic Pressure Generation Methods for Soft Robotics Applications

“…The first appearance of soft robots can be dated back to the late 1980s [44,45]. Although work on soft robotics has been going on for about thirty years, a bibliometric analysis [46] shows that it has only become a popular topic in the most recent decade. For this reason, most of the on-board pneumatic pressure generation methods for the specific application in soft robotics are only found in the recent literature.…”

“…NaN 3 → 2 Na + 3 N 2(46) and occurs at temperatures above 475 • C. At atmospheric pressure, the created sodium is liquid at these temperatures[31] and highly reactive; other chemical reactions may follow if suitable reactants like oxygen are available, but their influences are not discussed here.…”

Conceptual sequel to biological expeditions at the time of global changes

“…In general we can expect to witness a revival of the old topic of allometry (West and Brown, 2004), derived from the development of quantitative biology research. Robotics is often bioinspired (Bao et al, 2018), but we might see new ideas coming from the opposite camp, nonhomothetic growth in symbiotic robotic systems (Levi and Kernbach, 2010).…”

Kinematics and statics of eccentric soft bending actuators with external payloads

“…Soft robots have demonstrated excellent advantages in terms of human-machine interaction, unstructured environment exploration, and bionic systems [1] . Composing of materials with Young's modulus in the order of 10 4 -10 9 Pa, they possess softness, body compliance, shape sensing, and power storage features [2,3] . There are basically two types of materials used for them: (1) Smart materials, including shape memory alloy (SMA), ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC), dielectric elastomers (DE) and responsive hydrogels, that can deform themselves under activation of physical fields or in specific chemical environments [4][5][6][7][8] ; (2) Traditional elastic materials, such as rubbers, plastics, and Ni-Ti alloys, that require additional fluid or cable mechanisms to exert actuating forces on their structures [9][10][11] .…”