Recent progress and perspective of magnetic miniature soft robot with multimodal locomotion

Abstract Multimodal miniature soft robots, with their higher movement flexibility and environmental adaptability, represent a crucial direction for the future development of soft robots. Magnetic-driven robots, owing to their advantages such as excellent remote wireless control, fast response speed, and ease of integrated manufacturing, are the main driving method for robots to achieve multimodal locomotion. However, challenges persist in the development of magnetic miniature soft robots (MMSRs) with multimodal locomotion, including issues like interference between locomotion modes and low load capacity. Efforts are still required to design more balanced and refined performance in multimodal MMSRs. In this perspective, we review the recent progress of magnetic-driven soft robots with different locomotion modes, as well as multimodal MMSRs integrating 2–4 locomotion modes, and propose potential future directions for the development of multimodal MMSRs.