Soft pneumatic actuators: a review of design, fabrication, modeling, sensing, control and applications

Soft robotics is a rapidly evolving field where robots are fabricated using highly deformable materials and usually follow a bioinspired design. Their high dexterity and safety make them ideal for applications such as gripping, locomotion, and biomedical devices, where the environment is highly dynamic and sensitive to physical interaction. Pneumatic actuation remains the dominant technology in soft robotics due to its low cost and mass, fast response time, and easy implementation. Given the significant number of publications in soft robotics over recent years, newcomers and even established researchers may have difficulty assessing the state of the art. To address this issue, this article summarizes the development of soft pneumatic actuators and robots up until the date of publication. The scope of this article includes the design, modeling, fabrication, actuation, characterization, sensing, control, and applications of soft robotic devices. In addition to a historical overview, there is a special emphasis on recent advances such as novel designs, differential simulators, analytical and numerical modeling methods, topology optimization, data-driven modeling and control methods, hardware control boards, and nonlinear estimation and control techniques. Finally, the capabilities and limitations of soft pneumatic actuators and robots are discussed and directions for future research are identified

The use of electroporation in developmental biology

Chapter 139-1During the formation of a complex organism, cells divide, die, migrate, and differentiate. Biologists have established tools to observe those phenomena but also to change their course, which subsequently enables to infer causal relationships between various events occurring in different cell groups. More precisely, present approaches mostly rely on modifications of gene expression. For instance, cells are labeled with fluorescent proteins and tracked within the embryo, molecular signals are switched on and off to perturb regulatory pathways. Importantly, in all those experiments, the exogenous genetic material must be delivered at the right place and with the appropriate timing: requirements that can both be fulfilled by electroporation. After 15 years of constant refinement, this technique has now superseded methods like viral infection, microinjection, and lipofection. Applications encompass a large number of model organisms, targeted anatomical structures, and molecular biology techniques

Moral concepts across cultures The case of shame

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN007757 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo