Soft Underwater Swimming Robots Based on Artificial Muscle

Abstract With the increasing requirements of underwater missions and the rapid development of soft robotics technologies, soft underwater swimming robots have become a hot topic of research due to their low noise, high flexibility, and high environmental adaptability. In the past 10 years, research into soft underwater robots based on artificial muscle actuation has made considerable progress. Herein, a comprehensive survey on recent advances in soft underwater swimming robots based on different actuation methods is reviewed systematically, including pressure actuation, intelligent material actuation, and biomaterial actuation. First, for each type of actuation, the actuating principle, structural design, and swimming performance of soft underwater robots are introduced in detail. Then, according to the different swimming modes of underwater organisms, the aforementioned soft underwater robots are classified and compared. The results show that for different swimming tasks and application scenarios, the robot needs to realize the optimal design by reasonably selecting the actuating method and the swimming mode. This review summarizes the advanced information and critical technology in designing high‐performance soft underwater robots in the aspect of structural design, actuating methods, and swimming modes and offers an insightful outlook for the future development of soft robots.