Softening and onboarding computers and controllers is one of the final frontiers in soft robotics towards their robustness and intelligence for everyday use. In this regard, embodying soft and physical computing presents exciting potential. Physical computing seeks to encode inputs into a mechanical computing kernel and leverage the internal interactions among this kernel's constituent elements to compute the output. Moreover, such input-to-output evolution can be re-programmable. This perspective paper proposes a framework for embodying physical computing into soft robots and discusses three unique strategies in the literature: analog oscillators, physical reservoir computing, and physical algorithmic computing. These embodied computers enable the soft robot to perform complex behaviors that would otherwise require CMOS-based electronics -- including coordinated locomotion with obstacle avoidance, payload weight and orientation classification, and programmable operation based on logical rules. This paper will detail the working principles of these embodied physical computing methods, survey the current state-of-the-art, and present a perspective for future development.

翻译：软体化并集成计算机与控制器是软体机器人迈向日常应用鲁棒性与智能化的最后前沿之一。在这方面，融入软体与物理计算展现出令人兴奋的潜力。物理计算旨在将输入编码至机械计算内核，并利用该内核组成元素间的内部相互作用来计算输出。此外，此类输入到输出的演化过程可重新编程。本视角论文提出了一个将物理计算融入软体机器人的框架，并讨论了文献中的三种独特策略：模拟振荡器、物理储备池计算和物理算法计算。这些嵌入式计算机使软体机器人能够执行原本需要基于CMOS的电子设备才能完成的复杂行为——包括具有避障功能的协调运动、有效载荷重量与方向分类，以及基于逻辑规则的可编程操作。本文将详细阐述这些嵌入式物理计算方法的工作原理，综述当前最新进展，并对未来发展提出展望。