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Shape-programmable soft materials that exhibit integrated multifunctional shape manipulations, including reprogrammable, untethered, fast, and reversible shape transformation and locking, are highly desirable for a plethora of applications,…
There is a growing need for robots that can change their shape, size and mechanical properties to adapt to evolving tasks and environments. However, current shape-changing systems generally utilize bespoke, system-specific mechanisms that…
Additive manufacturing strives to combine any combination of materials into three dimensional functional structures and devices, ultimately opening up the possibility of 3D printed machines. It remains difficult to actuate such devices,…
Future active metamaterials for reconfigurable structural applications require fast, untethered, reversible, and reprogrammable (multimodal) transformability with shape locking. Herein, we aim to construct and demonstrate a…
Mechanical metamaterials actuators achieve pre-determined input--output operations exploiting architectural features encoded within a single 3D printed element, thus removing the need of assembling different structural components. Despite…
The concept of creating all-mechanical soft microrobotic systems has great potential to address outstanding challenges in biomedical applications, and introduce more sustainable and multifunctional products. To this end, magnetic fields and…
Active structures have the ability to change their shape, properties, and functionality as a response to changing operational conditions, which makes them more versatile than their static counterparts. However, most active structures…
4D printing empowers 3D printed structures made of hydrogels, liquid crystals or shape memory polymers, with reversible morphing capabilities in response to an external stimulus. To apply reversible shape-change to stiff lightweight…
Magnetic-responsive composites that consist of soft matrix embedded with hard-magnetic particles have recently been demonstrated as robust soft active materials for fast-transforming actuation. However, the deformation of the functional…
Shape morphing magnetic soft materials, composed of magnetic particles in a soft polymer matrix, can transform shapes reversibly, remotely, and rapidly, finding diverse applications in actuators, soft robotics, and biomedical devices. To…
Shape-programmed sheets morph from one surface into another upon activation by stimuli such as illumination, and have attracted much interest for their potential engineering applications, especially in soft robotics. Complex shape changes…
Conventional soft pneumatic actuators, typically based on hollow elastomeric chambers, often suffer from small structural support and require costly geometry-specific redesigns for multimodal functionality. Porous materials such as foam,…
Shape-morphing metamaterials enable adaptive structures capable of complex functional deformations, with applications ranging from reconfigurable structures and soft robotics to medical devices. However, their design remains challenging due…
Advances in 3D printing technology now enable the precise positioning of microscopic material voxels to form complex structures. Combined with emerging multi-material capabilities and printable responsive materials, this opens new…
Ionic polymer actuators, in essence, consist of ion exchange polymers sandwiched between layers of electrodes. They have recently gained recognition as promising candidates for soft actuators due to their lightweight nature, noise-free…
Shape memory alloys (SMAs) have been intensively investigated as actuators for the past several decades. Due to their high actuation energy density compared to other active materials, their current and potential applications in engineering…
Soft Robotics presents a rich canvas for free-form and continuum devices capable of exerting forces in any direction and transforming between arbitrary configurations. However, there is no current way to tractably and directly exploit the…
Large-scale shape-changing interfaces have great potential, but creating such systems requires substantial time, cost, space, and efforts, which hinders the research community to explore interactions beyond the scale of human hands. We…
While its biological significance is well-documented, its application in soft robotics, particularly for the transport of fragile and irregularly shaped objects, remains underexplored. This study presents a modular soft robotic actuator…
Many organisms leverage an interplay between shape and activity to generate motion and adapt to their environment. Embedding such feedback into synthetic microrobots could eliminate the need for sensors, software, and actuators, yet current…