Twisted string actuators (TSA) have been attracting increased attention from the engineering society in recent years. Despite a considerable amount of research efforts on the topic, there are several areas involving the TSAs that have not been studied, and some issues that have not been addressed. One of them is the life cycle of TSAs. To date, the effect of different load forces, contraction peed and stroke, string radius and length on the life cycle of the strings have not been studied thoroughly. Such a study requires extensive experimentation, and there are still no mathematical model that can reliably predict the life cycle of the TSA depending on the parameters of the strings and their operational environment. The second issue is creating a TSA which is capable of twisting inside a bent Bowden cable. Such an actuator can be extremely beneficial for countless robotics applications due to its mechanical simplicity and flexibility. However, the friction inside the cable may prevent the string from untwisting, which will negatively affect the performance of the actuator and may lead to hysteresis. Lastly, another fundamental rawback of conventional singlemotor TSAs is the fact that they can only generate unilateral force; That is, they can pull, but cannot push. Because of this, an antagonistic actuator is required to return the load to its original position if no external forces act on it. However, the nonlinear nature of string contraction as a result of twisting makes it impossible to connect 2 antagonistically placed strings to the same actuator without a complex mechanism which would compensate for this nonlinearity. If a simple linear spring is installed to recoil the load to its starting position, then it will be producing an increased amount of force during string contraction that the motor will have to overcome, which is undesired. A soft buckling structure providing almost constant force throughout its compression range can be introduced to solve this issue. This talk aims at addressing the 3 issues listed above.