See videos of one-piece machines, made of common materials like aluminum, steel, that are flexible and strong but no joints, no wear and require no-assembly with applications ranging from micro scale machines to shape-changing commercial aircraft.
Dejay Rezme that actually is the principle in some sports car suspension systems where damping can automatically varied without modifying the car and while running. There are lots of you tube videos on this but I have not seen it used directly as actuators.
Oh that's interesting. I figure they can slow down a rotating magnet or disk because of magnetic fields. The only (crazy) idea I could come up with for soft robots would be that maybe you can "solidify" the ferrofluid using a magnetic field to kind of have a "liquifiable bone". So part of the robot could be soft or with a magnet field it becomes stiff, or it can hold the pressure better and therefor lift more. I have no clue if ferrofluids can actually do that though.
