Soft robotics is an emerging field that approaches robots in new ways, enabling them to operate in environments that are unstructured or unstable and to perform tasks that require delicacy and malleability. It's all about engineering with soft materials — silicone, cloth, balloons, flexible plastics — and combining them in different ways to come up with novel, approachable, and surprising solutions to interesting problems. This book introduces soft-robotics concepts to students, inventors, and makers with easy-to-understand explanations and hands-on DIY projects. The projects use a wide range of tools and techniques — including microcontrollers, 3D printing, laser cutting, mold making, casting, and heat sealing — to create intriguing soft robots and devices. It is tinkering at its finest! If a traditional robot is made of mostly hard components—for example, metal or plastic—a soft robot is a robot in which primary functional components of the robot are made of soft and flexible materials. These can be lots of different things, from fabric and paper to flexible plastics, silicone, and other rubbers. Even living heart cells have been incorporated into soft robots.