Continuum soft robots are mechanical systems entirely made of continuously deformable elements. This design solution aims to bring robots closer to invertebrate animals and soft appendices of vertebrate animals (e.g., an elephant's trunk, a monkey's tail). This work aims to introduce the control theorist perspective to this novel development in robotics. We aim to remove the barriers to entry into this field by presenting existing results and future challenges using a unified language and within a coherent framework. Indeed, the main difficulty in entering this field is the wide variability of terminology and scientific backgrounds, making it quite hard to acquire a comprehensive view on the topic. Another limiting factor is that it is not obvious where to draw a clear line between the limitations imposed by the technology not being mature yet and the challenges intrinsic to this class of robots. In this work, we argue that the intrinsic effects are the continuum or multi-body dynamics, the presence of a non-negligible elastic potential field, and the variability in sensing and actuation strategies.

翻译：连续体软体机器人是完全由连续可变形元件构成的机械系统。这种设计方案旨在使机器人更接近无脊椎动物及脊椎动物（如象鼻、猴尾）的柔软附属器官。本文旨在从控制理论视角介绍机器人学领域的这一新发展。我们通过统一术语体系和连贯框架呈现现有成果与未来挑战，力图消除进入该领域的门槛。实际上，进入该领域的主要困难在于术语与科学背景的高度差异性，这使得全面理解该课题变得相当困难。另一个制约因素在于，很难明确区分技术不成熟带来的局限性与此类机器人固有的挑战。在本文中，我们认为固有效应包括连续体或多体动力学、不可忽略的弹性势场存在性以及传感与驱动策略的多样性。