Pneumatic flexible robots have the advantages of light weight,strong environmental adaptability,no need for component drive,and good reliability under harsh conditions.However,steering motion control has always been the biggest challenge in the development of pneumatic flexible robots and restricts their large-scale application.In response to this issue,an inflatable arm type flexible robot was designed which achieved active steering function by electrically heating the heat shrink film.The end effector was modeled and designed,and the inflatable wall material and heat shrink film material were experimentally selected.On this basis,a mathematical model for thermal induced shrinkage steering control was constructed,and an experimental prototype was built to verify the steering effect.The conclusions are as follows:a PE cylinder film with a thickness of 0.08 mm is selected as the inflatable wall strip film,and a PVC heat shrink film with a thickness of 0.075 mm and a width of 20 mm is selected as the heat shrink film.The optimal heat shrink temperature is 80 ℃.Through pulse control,right angle steering is achieved.This flexible robot has good application potential in pipeline inspection.