Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 9, 2026
07:40
Manufacturing, Control, and Performance Evaluation of a Gecko-Inspired Soft Robot
Published on: June 10, 2020
15.2K
Self-Sustained, Continuous Jumping of a Light-Driven Electronics-Free Insect-Scale Soft Robot.
Wenzhong Yan1,2, 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
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.
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.
