Complex and even chaotic dynamics, though prevalent in many natural and engineered systems, has been largely avoided in the design of electromechanical systems due to concerns about wear and controlability. Here, we demonstrate that complex dynamics might be particularly advantageous in soft robotics, offering new functionalities beyond motion not easily achievable with traditional actuation methods. We designed and realized resilient magnetic soft actuators capable of operating in a tunable dynamic regime for tens of thousands cycles without fatigue. We experimentally demonstrated the application of these actuators for true random number generation and stochastic computing. {W}e validate soft robots as physical reservoirs capable of performing Mackey--Glass time series prediction. These findings show that exploring the complex dynamics in soft robotics would extend the application scenarios in soft computing, human-robot interaction and collaborative robots as we demonstrate with biomimetic blinking and randomized voice modulation.

翻译：复杂乃至混沌动力学虽广泛存在于自然与工程系统中，但因磨损与可控性顾虑，在机电系统设计中长期被规避。本文论证了复杂动力学在软体机器人中可能具有独特优势，能够提供超越传统致动方式难以实现的非运动性新功能。我们设计并实现了具有可调动态机制的弹性磁软致动器，其可在数万次循环中无疲劳运行。通过实验，我们展示了该致动器在真随机数生成与随机计算中的应用。我们验证了软体机器人作为物理储备池执行Mackey-Glass时间序列预测的能力。这些发现表明，探索软体机器人中的复杂动力学将拓展其在软计算、人机交互与协作机器人中的应用场景，正如我们通过仿生眨眼与随机化语音调制所演示的。