Powering miniature robots using actuating materials that mimic skeletal muscle is attractive because conventional mechanical drive systems cannot be readily downsized. However, muscle is not the only mechanically active system in nature, and the thou...
Small-scale soft-bodied machines that respond to externally applied magnetic field have attracted wide research interest because of their unique capabilities and promising potential in a variety of fields, especially for biomedical applications. When...
Learning from the locomotion of natural organisms is one of the most effective strategies for designing microrobots. However, the development of bioinspired microrobots is still challenging because of technical bottlenecks such as design and seamless...
Variable stiffness catheters are typically composed of an encapsulated core. The core is usually composed of a low melting point alloy (LMPA) or a thermoplastic polymer (TP). In both cases, there is a need to encapsulate the core with an elastic mate...
Soft grippers that incorporate functional materials are important in the development of mechanically compliant and multifunctional interfaces for both sensing and stimulating soft objects and organisms. In particular, the capability for firm and deli...
Tens of thousands of planetary small bodies (asteroids, comets, and small moons) are flying beside our Earth with little understanding. Explorers on the surfaces of these bodies, unlike the Lunar or Mars rovers, have only few attempts and no sophisti...
Ultraviolet (UV)-curable thermoset shape memory polymers (TSMPs) with high recovery stress but mild glass transition temperature () are highly desired for 3D/4D printing lightweight load-bearing structures and devices. However, a bottleneck is that h...
Computational intelligence and neuroscience
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In the traditional clothing customization system, only the designer participates in the clothing design, and the style is single. In the face of numerous styles, the user just repeatedly arranges and combines the styles, but does not realize the user...
Nature provides abundant inspiration and elegant paradigms for the development of smart materials that can actuate, morph, and move on demand. One remarkable capacity of living organisms is to adapt their shapes or positions in response to stimuli. P...
Robots with submillimeter dimensions are of interest for applications that range from tools for minimally invasive surgical procedures in clinical medicine to vehicles for manipulating cells/tissues in biology research. The limited classes of structu...