Soft robotic systems, constructed from compliant and adaptive materials, offer advantages such as safe interaction with humans, flexibility in motion, and the ability to conform to unstructured environments. These capabilities make them promising for applications in healthcare, manufacturing, and exploration. A central challenge, however, is the development of actuation strategies that are versatile, efficient, and capable of integrating sensing and control.

This dissertation investigates pneumatic actuation as a broad platform for advancing soft robotic systems. Pneumatic systems naturally couple deformation with pressure signals, enabling not only motion generation but also embedded feedback and logic. Three representative studies are presented: the design of pneumatic actuators that support diverse motion behaviors, the development of stimuli-responsive valves that achieve autonomous environmental interaction, and the creation of pneumatically controlled lattices that demonstrate tunable mechanical properties.

Together, these works highlight the role of pneumatic actuation as more than a source of force, showing how it can support adaptability, responsiveness, and structural intelligence in soft systems, while pointing toward future directions in miniaturization and simplified pneumatic control.