Design of a prototype of an adaptive soft robot based on ferrofluid

Soft robots have shown amazing moving ability through a variety of motion patterns including bending, contraction, extension and twisting, leading to an extraordinary adaptability to complex environments. Pneumatic actuators and SMA are already used to achieve the softness, new materials are still waiting to thrive the field. Ferrofluid is a kind of novel smart material which can be controlled by a gradient magnetic field. In this paper, the concept of a ferrofluid soft robot is introduced for the first time. A prototype called Soft-ball is designed to test the potential of the soft robot. Soft-ball is made by putting ferrofluid into a soft shell so that it provides both characteristics of ferrofluid and softness. It is tested that Soft-ball can alter shapes or change position with the gradient of the magnetic field. To investigate its performance on different environments, Soft-ball passes several obstacles of different shapes in a series of experiments. Eventually we demonstrate that the design has the potential of adaptability to complex environments.