Systematic engineering design helps creating new soft machines

Soft robotics is an emerging field in the robotics community which deals with completely new types of robots. However, often new soft robotic designs depend on the ingenuity of the engineer rather being systematically derived. For this reason, in order to support the engineer in the design process, we present a design methodology for general technical systems in this paper and explain it in depth in the context of soft robotics. The design methodology consists of a combination of state-of-the-art engineering concepts that are arranged in such a way that the engineer is guided through the design process. The effectiveness of a systematic approach in soft robotics is illustrated on the design of a new gecko-inspired, climbing soft robot. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s40638-018-0088-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.