Tensegrity Approaches for Flexible Robots: A Review

Tensegrity robots are an emerging class of systems that use tensegrity principles to achieve a unique combination of flexibility and strength. Tensegrity is an engineering concept that combines compression and tension elements to create lightweight and resistant structures. This approach can achieve greater adaptability and flexibility in robots’ movement and their interaction with the environment. In addition, the ability of flexible systems with tensegrity to resist and recover from impacts and deformations makes them more resistant to damage than traditional rigid systems. Also, tensegrity robots have been applied in different environments, such as planetary exploration, flexible manipulation, locomotion, and modular robotics. This review presents basic definitions of tensegrity applied to flexible robots, the leading methods for structural and dynamic analysis of tensegrity robots, and emerging applications developed in recent years and still under development.