Polymer based sensors and actuators are an indispensable component of soft smart devices. These polymers, with the capacity of transduction, mainly refer to stimuli-responsive polymers, such as ionic-polymer metal composites (IPMC), dielectric elastomers (DE), hydrogels, polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF), and shape memory polymers (SMP). Over the past decade, research into the stimuli-responsive polymers has been flourishing, as indicated by the continued and growing rate of related publications, especially soft sensing and actuating fields for robotics.

This special issue aims to focus on a basic understanding and development of fabrication, design, and characterization of sensors and actuators based on stimuli-responsive polymers, by which these potential contributions will provide a guided outlook for future studies. We welcome both original research papers and review articles relating to the development and application of polymer based sensors and actuators.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Design and modeling of stimuli-responsive polymers
• Fabrication and characterization of stimuli-responsive polymers
• Novel sensors and actuators based on advance polymers
• 3D printing stimuli-responsive polymers
• Design and fabrication of polymer-based sensors and actuators
• Biomimetic micro-machines based on smart polymer
• Soft robotics based on polymer based sensors and actuators
• Energy harvesting devices based on transducing polymer