Introduction

Abstract

There’s no doubt that robots render valuable services in our day-to-day lives. The technological developments that have taken place over recent decades in the field of mechatronics form the basis of this, especially with the development of more refined sensors and advances in computing and software technologies. In general, product innovations and markets develop incrementally: the cost-benefit ratio improves from one generation to the next with regard to products as well as services. Thanks to the use of technologies inspired by biology, robotics is currently receiving unconventional impetus: instead of implementing the rigid mechanical structures of the past, a new robotics paradigm is now starting to focus on soft, pliable, sensitive, organic representations – on “soft robotics”.