Significance With the continuous progress of robotics and automatic control technology, robotics has been widely used in various fields such as medical treatment agriculture, and industry. China is a large producer of industrial robots, but the application of robotics in the apparel field is seriously lagging behind. Therefore, it is imperative to promote the combination of robotics with the apparel industry and enhance its application in automated apparel manufacturing and intelligent apparel. Soft robots are made from deformable materials, which have the advantages of high flexibility and adaptability compared with rigid robots and have now become a research hotspot in the field of robotics. The use of flexible materials enables soft robots to safely collaborate with users, which meets the requirement of co-integration in the apparel field and has great potential in accelerating the process of apparel intelligence.Progress This paper reviews the research progress of soft robotics in the apparel field. The paper starts by focusing on the key technology of soft robot. Research status is summarized in four aspects, which are manufacturing materials, manufacturing methods, driving methods, control and modeling. The different driving methods are widely used in textile grasping and transferring, and medical-assisted garments, respectively. Among them, the soft body gripper represented by gas drive shows excellent application prospects in textile fabric gripping and transfer, and the combined gripper and multi-point layout model further simplifies the automated clothing transfer system. The soft robotic garments are divided into upper limb assisted garments and lower limb assisted garments. Hand function rehabilitation gloves in upper limb assistive devices mainly enhance hand muscle strength with the help of pneumatic artificial muscle or tendon drive. The other parts of the upper limb and lower limb assisted flexible robot garments are employed to reduce metabolic costs so as to improve motor performance by means of shape memory alloy fabric muscles, unpowered exoskeleton devices, and so on. It is also pointed out that the development of garment-assisted strategies should focus on the importance of the human-machine system.Conclusion and Prospect In oder to address the shortcomings in the existing research, the driving method can be optimized with the help of smart materials, and the sensing and control elements can be reduced in combination with micromachining technology to improve the soft robot manufacturing efficiency and precise control. By analyzing the textile fabric characteristics, the accuracy of textile fabric gripping and dropping, and improve the versatility of fabric gripper to face the complicated fabric handling process are proposed for improvement. The research and development of intelligent garments should adhere to the principle of "human-centered" and optimize the performance of robot-assisted devices with the help of "human-in-the-loop" approach. The research of soft robots is still in its infant stage, and its use in the apparel field is of profound interdisciplinary and system complexity. It is necessary to further explore the industrial model of apparel smart manufacturing, and to integrate soft robotics with the apparel industry based on human needs. © 2024 China Textile Engineering Society. All rights reserved.
