A systematic review of soft actuators in agriculture

Abstract

Industrial machines and robots use actuators to facilitate repetitive tasks. Conventionally, stiff actuators are used to enable precise position control in a high-pace system. They are usually placed in human-free environments because of safety concerns as they do not comply in a collision. On the other hand, there has been a growing interest in human-robot interactions that require robots to be placed alongside humans. These applications need a soft actuator. An example of a soft actuator is a pneumatic muscle actuator (PMA) which produces a one-way motion and force as a result of the muscle’s contraction under air pressure. In this paper, the aim is to present a systematic review covering the main published solutions of soft actuators including PMA in agricultural applications. This paper provides a useful foundation on the soft actuators, their main applications in agriculture, their challenges and opportunities, as well as supporting new research works in the soft actuators' field.