Morphological computation - A potential solution for the control problem in soft robotics

Soft robotics provides a new and exciting approach to design robots. Often inspired by the remarkable performances of biological systems a number of soft robotic designs have been proposed and implemented. Despite their great potential with respect to safety, energy efficiency, and adaptivity, soft robotics still faces a number of fundamental problems, e.g. their inherent complex dynamics that makes it difficult to apply classical control approaches. Morphological computation, a concept that understands that physical bodies can carry out computation, has the great potential to overcome this challenge by providing a novel point of view. Recent theoretical models on morphological computation as well real-world proof of concepts suggest that these unwanted complex dynamics of soft bodies can be actually beneficial and that they can be exploited as a computational resource. As a result, morphological computation allows to simplify the control and learning tasks by outsourcing computation to the physical body and, therefore, pointing to a potential solution for the control problem in soft robotics.