Soft robotics is an emerging technology in which engineers create flexible devices for use in a variety of applications. In order to advance the wide adoption of soft robots, ensuring their trustworthiness is essential; if soft robots are not trusted, they will not be used to their full potential. In order to demonstrate trustworthiness, a specification needs to be formulated to define what is trustworthy. However, even for soft robotic grippers, which is one of the most mature areas in soft robotics, the soft robotics community has so far given very little attention to formulating specifications. In this work, we discuss the importance of developing specifications during development of soft robotic systems, and present an extensive example specification for a soft gripper for pick-and-place tasks for grocery items. The proposed specification covers both functional and non-functional requirements, such as reliability, safety, adaptability, predictability, ethics, and regulations. We also highlight the need to promote verifiability as a first-class objective in the design of a soft gripper.

翻译：软体机器人是一种新兴技术，工程师们利用其制造柔性设备以应用于多种场景。为了推动软体机器人的广泛采用，确保其可信性至关重要——若软体机器人无法获得信任，其潜力便难以充分发挥。要证明可信性，首先需要制定明确规范以界定何为可信。然而，即便在软体机器人领域最成熟的软体抓取器中，目前学界对规范制定的关注仍十分有限。本文探讨了在软体机器人系统开发过程中制定规范的重要性，并以面向杂货抓取任务的软体夹持器为例，提出了一个详尽的规范框架。该框架涵盖功能性与非功能性需求，包括可靠性、安全性、适应性、可预测性、伦理规范及法规要求。同时，我们强调应将可验证性作为软体夹持器设计的首要目标加以推进。