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Microrobots and nanorobots have been produced with various nature-inspired soft materials and operating mechanisms. However, freely operating a wirelessly miniaturized soft robot remains a challenge. In this study, a wireless crawling compact soft robot using induction heating was developed. The magnetic composite heater built into the robot was heated wirelessly via induction heating, causing a phase change in the working fluid surrounding the heater. The pressure generated from the evaporated fluid induces the bending of the robot, which is composed of elastomers. During one cycle of bending by heating and shrinking by cooling, the difference in the frictional force between the two legs of the robot causes it to move forward. This robot moved 7240 μm, representing 103% of its body length, over nine repetitions. Because the robot's surface is made of biocompatible materials, it offers new possibilities for a soft exploratory microrobot that can be used inside a living body or in a narrow pipe.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi14010162 | DOI Listing |
Sci Adv
September 2025
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117583, Singapore.
Embodied intelligence in soft robotics offers unprecedented capabilities for operating in uncertain, confined, and fragile environments that challenge conventional technologies. However, achieving true embodied intelligence-which requires continuous environmental sensing, real-time control, and autonomous decision-making-faces challenges in energy management and system integration. We developed deformation-resilient flexible batteries with enhanced performance under magnetic fields inherently present in magnetically actuated soft robots, with capacity retention after 200 cycles improved from 31.
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September 2025
School of Biomedical Engineering, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, China.
Developing intelligent robots with integrated sensing capabilities is critical for advanced manufacturing, medical robots, and embodied intelligence. Existing robotic sensing technologies are limited to recording of acceleration, driving torque, pressure feedback, and so on. Expanding and integrating with the multimodal sensors to mimic and even surpass the human feeling is substantially underdeveloped.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoft Robot
September 2025
The School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia.
Soft robotic systems are promising for diverse space applications due to their embedded compliance, promising locomotion methods, and efficient use of mass and volume. Space environments are harsher and more varied than those on Earth; extreme temperature, pressure, and radiation may impact the performance and robustness of soft robots. Cryogenic temperatures on celestial bodies such as the Moon or Europa pose significant challenges to the flexibility and actuation performance of conventional soft systems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoft Robot
September 2025
Bioinspired Soft Robotics Laboratory, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy.
Animal diaphragm-lung systems are soft organs that generate a controllable vacuum. Elephants, as rare land animals, can manipulate all three states of matter using their lung-generated vacuum. In soft robotics, however, current vacuum generation relies on rigid components, and no single soft device effectively handles all states of matter.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrosyst Nanoeng
September 2025
Department of Ophthalmology, Key Laboratory of Precision Medicine for Eye Diseases of Zhejiang Province, Center for Rehabilitation Medicine,, Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital (Affiliated People's Hospital, Hangzhou Medical College), Hangzhou, 314408, China.
Retinal surgery is one of the most delicate and complex operations, which is close to or even beyond the physiological limitation of the human hand. Robots have demonstrated the ability to filter hand tremors and motion scaling which has a promising output in microsurgery. Here, we present a novel soft micron accuracy robot (SMAR) for retinal surgery and achieve a more precise and safer operation.
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