Curated News
By: NewsRamp Editorial Staff
December 24, 2025
Soft Robots Achieve Life-Like Motion with Light-Controlled Shape-Shifting
TLDR
- Researchers developed soft robots using liquid crystal elastomers that can climb poles and grasp objects remotely, offering advantages for search-and-rescue and biomedical applications.
- The system integrates photothermal-responsive silver nanowires with mechanically pre-aligned liquid crystal elastomers to enable reversible helix-plane transformation and NIR-controlled climbing through molecular orientation programming.
- These soft robots could perform minimally invasive surgeries and explore hazardous environments, making medical procedures safer and search-and-rescue operations more effective.
- Soft robots inspired by koalas and vines can climb poles and grip objects using light-controlled shape-shifting materials without traditional motors.
Impact - Why it Matters
This research represents a paradigm shift in soft robotics with far-reaching implications across multiple sectors. For healthcare, these light-controlled, motor-free systems could enable minimally invasive surgical tools that navigate the body with unprecedented precision while reducing tissue damage. In disaster response and industrial inspection, robots capable of climbing complex terrain and adapting their shape could access hazardous environments unreachable by conventional robots. The technology's remote operation capability eliminates the need for tethers or bulky power systems, potentially enabling autonomous exploration in space or deep-sea environments. For manufacturing and micromanipulation, the precise, contactless control offers new possibilities for handling delicate materials. Beyond specific applications, this work demonstrates how bioinspired design principles combined with advanced materials science can create systems that bridge the gap between biological adaptability and technological reliability—potentially leading to a new generation of robots that work alongside humans in dynamic, unstructured settings.
Summary
Researchers from Jiangsu University have developed a groundbreaking soft robotic platform that achieves unprecedented life-like motion through innovative material engineering. Published in the Chinese Journal of Polymer Science, their study presents a hierarchical design strategy using liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) integrated with photothermal-responsive silver nanowires. This combination enables programmable structures capable of reversible helix-plane transformation, NIR-controlled climbing, and topology-dependent locking behaviors—allowing the soft robots to perform complex tasks like terrain-adaptive grasping and koala-like pole climbing without traditional motors or rigid components.
The key breakthrough lies in controlling molecular orientation and topology at multiple scales. Through mechanical pre-alignment reaching 1000% strain and a tri-layer structure (AgNW/LCE/PI) that enhances near-infrared absorption, the actuators achieve remote operation through photothermal-mechanical conversion. The system demonstrates remarkable capabilities including vine-like curling, light-driven climbing via sequential contraction, and Möbius topological programming that enables self-locking deformation. These innovations represent a significant advancement toward autonomous soft robots for unstructured environments, with potential applications ranging from search-and-rescue operations to minimally invasive medical procedures.
This work establishes a scalable framework for next-generation soft robotics where a single material system can climb, grasp, anchor, and reconfigure under remote light control. The researchers emphasize how their approach integrates molecular orientation programming with light-triggered topological actuation—enabling motion patterns previously inaccessible to conventional soft robotics. As highlighted in their publication in the Chinese Journal of Polymer Science, this bioinspired structural logic transforms LCEs into adaptive robotic systems that could revolutionize fields from pipeline inspection to environmental exploration, while the programmable Möbius topology provides new routes for mechanical memory and energy-efficient locomotion.
Source Statement
This curated news summary relied on content disributed by 24-7 Press Release. Read the original source here, Soft Robots Achieve Life-Like Motion with Light-Controlled Shape-Shifting
