Novel technologies, fabrication methods, controllers and computational methods are rapidly advancing the capabilities of soft robotics. This is creating the need for design techniques and methodologies that are suited for the multi-disciplinary nature of soft robotics. These are needed to provide a formalized and scientific approach to design. In this paper, we formalize the scientific questions driving soft robotic design; what motivates the design of soft robots, and what are the fundamental challenges when designing soft robots? We review current methods and approaches to soft robot design including bio-inspired design, computational design and human-driven design, and highlight the implications that each design methods has on the resulting soft robotic systems. To conclude, we provide an analysis of emerging methods which could assist robot design, and we present a review some of the necessary technologies that may enable these approaches.

The design and fabrication of tissue engineering scaffolds is a highly complex process. In order to provide a proper architecture for cells to grow, proliferate, and differentiate to form tissues, scaffolds have to be made with suitable properties. However, the limited structural designs and conventional fabrication techniques severely cripple the improvement of scaffold properties. To overcome these limitations, many researchers have recently adopted computational methods combined with 3D printing techniques as a new approach for scaffold design and fabrication. This approach allows scaffolds to be designed and fabricated with highly complex microstructures and good control and accuracy. Previous works have also shown this approach to be a very useful tool to predict the scaffold properties and to optimize the scaffold designs with a great reduction of experimental iterations. As this approach combining computational methods and 3D printing techniques for scaffold design and fabrication has many advantages over the conventional trial-and-error based approach, it is imperative to provide a state-of-the-art review on the topic. To this end, this article reviews the various applications of computational methods in scaffold design and simulation; it also briefly reviews the application of 3D printing techniques to fabricate the computationally designed scaffolds. Finally, the limitations and future trends of this approach are discussed. Overall, this review will enable readers to understand the benefits of using computational methods coupled with 3D printing to design and fabricate scaffolds, and thus help researchers to improve and optimize the scaffold properties for future tissue engineering research. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater 107B: 1329-1351, 2019.