@article{qi_li_hong_zhao_qing_yin_2024, title={Defected twisted ring topology for autonomous periodic flip-spin-orbit soft robot}, volume={121}, ISSN={["1091-6490"]}, DOI={10.1073/pnas.231268012}, number={3}, journal={PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA}, author={Qi, Fangjie and Li, Yanbin and Hong, Yaoye and Zhao, Yao and Qing, Haitao and Yin, Jie}, year={2024}, month={Jan} }
 @article{chi_zhao_hong_li_yin_2023, title={A Perspective on Miniature Soft Robotics: Actuation, Fabrication, Control, and Applications}, ISSN={["2640-4567"]}, DOI={10.1002/aisy.202300063}, abstractNote={Soft robotics enriches the robotic functionalities by engineering soft materials and electronics toward enhanced compliance, adaptivity, and friendly human machine. This decade has witnessed extraordinary progresses and benefits in scaling down soft robotics to small scale for a wide range of potential and promising applications, including medical and surgical soft robots, wearable and rehabilitation robots, and unconstructed environments exploration. This perspective highlights recent research efforts in miniature soft robotics in a brief and comprehensive way in terms of actuation, powering, designs, fabrication, control, and applications in four sections. Section 2 discusses the key aspects of materials selection and structural designs for small‐scale tethered and untethered actuation and powering, including fluidic actuation, stimuli‐responsive actuation, and soft living biohybrid materials, as well as structural forms from 1D to 3D. Section 3 discusses the advanced manufacturing techniques at small scales for fabricating miniature soft robots, including lithography, mechanical self‐assembly, additive manufacturing, tissue engineering, and other fabrication methods. Section 4 discusses the control systems used in miniature robots, including off‐board/onboard controls and artificial intelligence‐based controls. Section 5 discusses their potential broad applications in healthcare, small‐scale objects manipulating and processing, and environmental monitoring. Finally, outlooks on the challenges and opportunities are discussed.}, journal={ADVANCED INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS}, author={Chi, Yinding and Zhao, Yao and Hong, Yaoye and Li, Yanbin and Yin, Jie}, year={2023}, month={Apr} }
 @article{hong_zhao_berman_chi_li_huang_yin_2023, title={Angle-programmed tendril-like trajectories enable a multifunctional gripper with ultradelicacy, ultrastrength, and ultraprecision}, volume={14}, ISSN={["2041-1723"]}, DOI={10.1038/s41467-023-39741-6}, abstractNote={Abstract}, number={1}, journal={NATURE COMMUNICATIONS}, author={Hong, Yaoye and Zhao, Yao and Berman, Joseph and Chi, Yinding and Li, Yanbin and Huang, He and Yin, Jie}, year={2023}, month={Aug} }
 @article{wu_hong_zhao_yin_zhu_2023, title={Caterpillar-inspired soft crawling robot with distributed programmable thermal actuation}, volume={9}, ISSN={["2375-2548"]}, DOI={10.1126/sciadv.adf8014}, abstractNote={Many inspirations for soft robotics are from the natural world, such as octopuses, snakes, and caterpillars. Here, we report a caterpillar-inspired, energy-efficient crawling robot with multiple crawling modes, enabled by joule heating of a patterned soft heater consisting of silver nanowire networks in a liquid crystal elastomer (LCE)–based thermal bimorph actuator. With patterned and distributed heaters and programmable heating, different temperature and hence curvature distribution along the body of the robot are achieved, enabling bidirectional locomotion as a result of the friction competition between the front and rear end with the ground. The thermal bimorph behavior is studied to predict and optimize the local curvature of the robot under thermal stimuli. The bidirectional actuation modes with the crawling speeds are investigated. The capability of passing through obstacles with limited spacing are demonstrated. The strategy of distributed and programmable heating and actuation with thermal responsive materials offers unprecedented capabilities for smart and multifunctional soft robots.}, number={12}, journal={SCIENCE ADVANCES}, author={Wu, Shuang and Hong, Yaoye and Zhao, Yao and Yin, Jie and Zhu, Yong}, year={2023}, month={Mar} }
 @article{zhao_hong_li_qi_qing_su_yin_2023, title={Physically intelligent autonomous soft robotic maze escaper}, volume={9}, ISSN={["2375-2548"]}, DOI={10.1126/sciadv.adi3254}, abstractNote={Autonomous maze navigation is appealing yet challenging in soft robotics for exploring priori unknown unstructured environments, as it often requires human-like brain that integrates onboard power, sensors, and control for computational intelligence. Here, we report harnessing both geometric and materials intelligence in liquid crystal elastomer–based self-rolling robots for autonomous escaping from complex multichannel mazes without the need for human-like brain. The soft robot powered by environmental thermal energy has asymmetric geometry with hybrid twisted and helical shapes on two ends. Such geometric asymmetry enables built-in active and sustained self-turning capabilities, unlike its symmetric counterparts in either twisted or helical shapes that only demonstrate transient self-turning through untwisting. Combining self-snapping for motion reflection, it shows unique curved zigzag paths to avoid entrapment in its counterparts, which allows for successful self-escaping from various challenging mazes, including mazes on granular terrains, mazes with narrow gaps, and even mazes with in situ changing layouts.}, number={36}, journal={SCIENCE ADVANCES}, author={Zhao, Yao and Hong, Yaoye and Li, Yanbin and Qi, Fangjie and Qing, Haitao and Su, Hao and Yin, Jie}, year={2023}, month={Sep} }
 @misc{chi_li_zhao_hong_tang_yin_2022, title={Bistable and Multistable Actuators for Soft Robots: Structures, Materials, and Functionalities}, volume={34}, ISSN={["1521-4095"]}, DOI={10.1002/adma.202110384}, abstractNote={Abstract}, number={19}, journal={ADVANCED MATERIALS}, author={Chi, Yinding and Li, Yanbin and Zhao, Yao and Hong, Yaoye and Tang, Yichao and Yin, Jie}, year={2022}, month={May} }
 @article{zhao_hong_qi_chi_su_yin_2022, title={Self-Sustained Snapping Drives Autonomous Dancing and Motion in Free-Standing Wavy Rings}, volume={12}, ISSN={["1521-4095"]}, DOI={10.1002/adma.202207372}, abstractNote={Abstract}, journal={ADVANCED MATERIALS}, author={Zhao, Yao and Hong, Yaoye and Qi, Fangjie and Chi, Yinding and Su, Hao and Yin, Jie}, year={2022}, month={Dec} }
 @article{chi_hong_zhao_li_yin_2022, title={Snapping for high-speed and high-efficient butterfly stroke-like soft swimmer}, volume={8}, ISSN={["2375-2548"]}, DOI={10.1126/sciadv.add3788}, abstractNote={Natural selection has tuned many flying and swimming animals to share the same narrow design space for high power efficiency, e.g., their dimensionless Strouhal numbers St that relate flapping frequency and amplitude and forward speed fall within the range of 0.2 < St < 0.4 for peak propulsive efficiency. It is rather challenging to achieve both comparably fast-speed and high-efficient soft swimmers to marine animals due to the naturally selected narrow design space and soft body compliance. Here, bioinspired by the flapping motion in swimming animals, we report leveraging snapping instabilities for soft flapping-wing swimmers with comparable high performance to biological counterparts. The lightweight, butterfly stroke–like soft swimmer (2.8 g) demonstrates a record-high speed of 3.74 body length/s (4.8 times faster than the reported fastest flapping soft swimmer), high power efficiency (0.2 < St = 0.25 < 0.4), low energy consumption cost, and high maneuverability (a high turning speed of 157°/s).}, number={46}, journal={SCIENCE ADVANCES}, author={Chi, Yinding and Hong, Yaoye and Zhao, Yao and Li, Yanbin and Yin, Jie}, year={2022}, month={Nov} }
 @article{li_zhao_chi_hong_yin_2021, title={Shape-morphing materials and structures for energy-efficient building envelopes}, volume={22}, ISSN={["2468-6069"]}, DOI={10.1016/j.mtener.2021.100874}, abstractNote={Buildings account for 30% of global energy consumption. Improving the energy efficiency of buildings becomes essential to reducing energy consumption for alleviating their deteriorating impacts on the environment. As one of the key elements, the building envelope is essential to reducing the building energy consumption. Recent researches have demonstrated the promise of environmentally adaptive shape-morphing building envelopes in enhancing energy efficiency over the conventional stationary ones. In this review, we briefly discuss the recent advances in energy-efficient shape-morphing building envelopes from both structural designs and engineering materials viewpoints for energy saving and energy harvesting. For structural designs, we discuss the designs and performances of four representative categories of shape-morphing building envelopes, including conventional dynamic façades with simple rigid motions, biomimic adaptive structures, reconfigurable kirigami/origami-based structures, and morphable wrinkling surface–based smart windows. For materials design, we discuss the typical materials and design strategies used for actuating the shape-morphing building envelopes and smart windows. We expect that this brief review will be insightful for developing future shape-morphing building envelopes to make buildings more energetically efficient, comfortable, and environmentally friendly.}, journal={MATERIALS TODAY ENERGY}, author={Li, Yanbin and Zhao, Yao and Chi, Yinding and Hong, Yaoye and Yin, Jie}, year={2021}, month={Dec} }