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Manufacturing, Control, and Performance Evaluation of a Gecko-Inspired Soft Robot

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Published on: June 10, 2020

Self-Sustained, Continuous Jumping of a Light-Driven Electronics-Free Insect-Scale Soft Robot.

Wenzhong Yan^1,2, Pengju Shi³, Zixiao Liu³

¹Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, 90095, USA.

Advanced Materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.)

|December 1, 2025

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Researchers developed insect-scale soft robots that can jump continuously using light energy. These robots demonstrate autonomous operation and potential for various applications like environmental monitoring and disaster recovery.

Keywords:

autonomous robot liquid crystal elastomer nature‐inspired machine self‐sustained locomotion soft robot

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Area of Science:

Robotics
Materials Science
Biomimicry

Background:

Insects utilize environmental energy for locomotion, including repeated jumping for terrain traversal.
Current insect-scale robots face limitations in sustained jumping due to inefficient energy, actuation, and control integration, often requiring electronics.
Desirable applications for insect-scale robots include surveillance, disaster recovery, environmental monitoring, and hazardous environment exploration.

Purpose of the Study:

To introduce insect-scale soft robots capable of continuous, autonomous jumping.
To achieve untethered, perpetual actuation without electronics, powered by light.
To investigate the mechanism enabling sustained jumping and explore the robot's functional capabilities.

Main Methods:

Development of insect-scale (301 mg) soft robots with embedded energy harvesting, actuation, and control.
Utilizing a light-driven mechanism called self-sustained, repeated snapping (SSRS) based on photoresponsive liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs).
Investigating SSRS dynamics through simulations and experiments, focusing on snap-through instability and self-shadowing.

Main Results:

A single robot achieved 188 nonstop jumps and over 800 jumps in a year without performance degradation, powered solely by constant light.
The SSRS mechanism, driven by a light-material interplay and feedback loop, enables untethered, perpetual actuation.
Demonstrated capabilities include self-righting, directional jumping, obstacle negotiation, hazardous gas sensing, and extreme load-bearing (≈1700 times its weight).

Conclusions:

The developed light-driven SSRS mechanism enables fully autonomous, long-lived insect-scale robots without electronics.
These robots show significant potential for applications in confined-space exploration, environmental monitoring, and disaster recovery.
This work represents a significant advancement toward creating self-sustained micro-robots inspired by insect capabilities.