SEMINAR

Soft robots, designed to mimic the capabilities of precise sensing and intricate movement of living organisms, excel in delicate tasks, exploring confined spaces, and providing valuable feedback from their interactions with surroundings. However, controlling soft robots presents a greater challenge compared to their rigid counterparts, because the viscoelasticity of soft bodies leads to non-linear responses marked by significant hysteresis and material dependency. Therefore, the development of sensors and actuators with high selectivity, directionality, and precision is essential to effectively monitor and control their behavior. Anisotropy in materials offers substantial advantages for enhancing these properties in sensors and actuators. In our design of micro/nano-scaled anisotropy, we fabricated hierarchical ZnO nanowire arrays and developed electronic skins capable of detecting both static and dynamic stimuli, like tactile perception of human skin. The effective stress transmission of microridge structures between the epidermis and dermis has provided significant insights for designing spacer-free and wearable triboelectric sensors for motion tracking. In a spin-level anisotropy, we deposited several nanometer-thick layers of anisotropic nanomagnets for selective magnetic-field sensing and developed highly compliant and printable magnetic pastes for proximity sensing. Finally, we demonstrated soft, hingeless, and intelligent magnetic origami actuators that enable shape-reconfigurable and directional actuation, simply guided by light and magnetic fields. The proposed sensors and actuators, based on the anisotropic shapes and behaviors of micro/nano-materials that change their physical properties in response to mechanical stress, electric/electromagnetic fields, and a variety of other energy sources, enable robots to perform tasks with remarkable precision and autonomy.