Past & Ongoing Projects

Strain-coupled Elastic medium

• Multifunctional soft elastic medium with periodic hard inclusions
• Study on local and global responses of periodic lattice-type strain coupling
• Thin-film property engineering through spatial engineering of structural parameters and configurations of the inclusions
• Demonstration of programmable surface micro-texturing and various macroscopic strain-sensitive responses

​Further reading:
Adv Mater 30, 1802190 (2018) 

Multifunctional Fully Integrated Electronic Skin

• A functionally integrated, system-level, skin-like electronic system
• Fully printed electronic wrap consisting of strain-isolation structures, stretchable interconnects, ICs, and self-assembled vias
• Modular design using rapid, room-temperature on-skin bonding process
• Demonstration of stretchable display, wearable watch, wearable sensor-integrated system, and skin-type logic circuits

​Further reading:
Sci Rep 7, 45328 (2017)
Adv Electron Mater 3, 1600517 (2017)
Adv Funct Mater 27, 1701912 (2017)
Adv Funct Mater 28, 1806014 (2018)
Adv Sci 6, 1801682 (2019)

Electronic Epidermis for Soft Robots

• The first skin-like soft driving system for a new direction of soft robotic assembly
• Development of an electronic epidermis pair that perform wireless inter-skin communication for soft and reversible functionalization of soft robots
• Minimized inherent hardness and reduced compliance gap featured by thickness, weight, and fragmented circuit configuration
• First demonstration of soft, multi-robot system activated by a single e-skin

​Further reading:
Science Robotics 3, eaas9020 (2018) 

Bioinspired Dual-morphing Soft Robotic Origami

• Pelican eel inspired dual-morphing architectures that embody quasi-sequential behaviors of origami unfolding and skin stretching
• First observation and discovery of the principle that a pelican eel exploits to effectively enable adaptive and extreme shape morphing
• Reproduction of the dual-morphing behavior of the live pelican eel
• Demonstration of unexplored realms of kinematic features, locomotion, gripping mechanisms and biomimicry incorporated with wide pools of traditional origami​

​Further reading:
Science Robotics 4 eaay3493 (2019)
Science News (doi:10.1126/science.aav6184)

Swimming Leaf

• A new underwater maneuvering principle for thin, planar membranes based on buoyancy-mediated active flutter
• Inspiration from passive flutter dynamics of falling leaves
• Development of a swimming leaf
• Hydrodynamic engineering for non-chaotic, periodic fluttering motion
• Instantaneous, repeatable, and lifelike steering by spatiotemporal buoyancy control
• Demonstration of functional robotic sheets for autonomous, intelligent environmental remediation

Further reading:
Science Robotics (2021)

4D Printing of Continuous Shape Representation

• Development of systematic 4D printing design framework for continuous shape representation
• A new 4D printing strategy of shape memory polymers that can program continuous levels of shape-recovery strain
• Mathematical function representation for 4D printing
• Reproduction and versatile modification of complex quasi-3D and 3D models that are represented in arbitrary function forms such as polynomial, exponential, trigonometric and their composites

Further reading:
Adv Mater Technol (2021)