Stanford
Zhao Lab

Soft Robotics

Compared to traditional robots, in which rigid links are connected by joints, soft robots are composed of compliant materials and structures. Soft robots are continuum, configurable, and adaptable with functionalities relying on high degrees of freedom shape morphing.

Spinning-enabled Wireless Amphibious Origami Millirobot, Nature Communications (2022)

Amphibious origami millirobot utilizes spinning-enabled locomotion for navigation capability in various on-ground and in-water environments with controlled delivery of liquid medicine and targeted solid cargo transportation functions

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Soft Robotic Origami Crawler, Science Advance (2022)

A small-scale origami crawler is developed based on a four-unit Kresling origami assembly by magnetic actuation with the capabilities of crawling in confined space, fast steering, and drug storage and release

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Stretchable origami robotic arm with omnidirectional bending and twisting, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021)

Inspired by the soft-bodied cephalopod biosystem, we engineer origami robotic arms to achieve multimodal deformations that integrate stretching, folding, omnidirectional bending, and twisting

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Untethered control of functional origami microrobots with distributed actuation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020)

A magnetically responsive origami system is developed, possessing distributed, untethered control capabilities for integrating actuation, sensing, and computing

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Evolutionary Algorithm‐Guided Voxel‐Encoding Printing of Functional Hard‐Magnetic Soft Active Materials, Advanced Intelligent Systems (2020)

Evolutionary algorithm-guided voxel-encoding direct ink writing printing allows magnetic actuation with predesigned curvature distribution for biomimetic robots

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Symmetry-breaking actuation mechanism for soft robotics and active metamaterials, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2019)

A mechanics-guided mechanism for multimodal deformation is demonstrated, which enables functional biomimetic crawling and swimming robots with efficient dynamic performance

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