fig8

Figure 8. Application in soft robotics. (A) Self-crawling robot. The robot with a twisted ring shape offers a tunable moving speed at different temperatures. Scale bar, 2 cm. Reproduced with permission^[140]. Copyright 2022, Wiley-VCH GmbH; (B) rolling robot. The robot can realize the self-folding (from 2D shape to 3D cylindrical shape) and self-rolling under thermal actuation. Scale bars, 1 cm. Reproduced with permission^[46]. Copyright 2019, American Association for the Advancement of Science; (C) jumping robot. The robot has a double-folded ribbon shape, exhibiting an excellent jumping performance under the optical actuation. Scale bars, 2 mm at the middle panel and 20 mm at the right. Reproduced with permission^[139]. Copyright 2023, Wiley-VCH; (D) climbing robot. The robot can climb on various curvy surfaces, and switch between two different surfaces, by harnessing the electrothermal actuation. Scale bars, 1 cm. Reproduced with permission^[47]. Copyright 2022, National Academy of Science; (E) swimming robot. The geometrically reconfigurable robot (arc-shaped in the air and helix-shaped in the viscous liquid) can walk, jump, and swim in response to remote thermal/magnetic fields. Scale bars, 5 mm. Reproduced with permission^[133]. Copyright 2021, Wiley-VCH; (F) macroscopic gripper. The schematic illustration shows an electrically controlled gripper consisting of three tubular LCE actuators, a microcontroller, and a fixture. The optical images on the bottom show that the gripper can realize grabbing, holding and releasing. Scale bar, 1 cm. Reproduced with permission^[45]. Copyright 2019, American Association for the Advancement of Science; (G) microgripper. The photograph shows that the microgripper autonomously grabs certain materials. Scale bar, 20 μm. Reproduced with permission^[141]. Copyright 2017, WILEY-VCH; (H) camouflage robot. The schematic illustration shows a biomimetic robot that can crawl and discolor in response to light with different wavelengths. Reproduced with permission^[142]. Copyright 2021, Wiley-VCH.