Research

Smart materials enable actuation and sensing, structural mechanics embeds control in robotic bodies, and mechanics-guided learning accelerates the design of adaptive robots.

My research explores how intelligence can be built directly into robotic bodies. I combine structural mechanics and functional materials to program energy release, response timing, and shape change, enabling complex behavior with simplified actuation and control. My earlier work established mechanisms for fast soft swimming, programmable delayed snapping, and miniature hydraulic actuation. My current research extends these principles to LCE artificial muscles, reconfigurable structures, and rain-triggered devices for ecological restoration. My long-term vision is to establish mechanical intelligence as a predictive design framework connecting structural geometry, material response, and physical interactions to adaptive robotic behavior. I aim to develop robots whose bodies coordinate sensing and action while reducing demands on onboard power and control hardware. Future directions include adaptive aquatic propulsion, autonomous environmental deployment, reconfigurable space robotics, and biomedical devices.

Future research thrusts

Thrust 1: Adaptive swimming robotics

Instability-Gated Programmable Stiffness for Efficient Propulsion

Programmable liquid-metal fins tune stiffness in real time and use elastic snap-through to convert stored strain energy into fast, high-thrust strokes. This thrust links stiffness distribution, wake structure, thrust-per-watt, switching speed, and cost of transport to create efficient propulsion across swimming speeds.

Multimodal Maneuvering in Soft Robotic Swimmers

Soft swimmers should cruise, dart, turn, and hover with the same body. This thrust builds mono-, bi-, and multistable propulsive units whose stable states encode different locomotion modes, turning maneuverability into a structural design problem rather than only a control problem.

Morphable Wings for Repeated Air-Water Transition

Aerial-aquatic robots must survive water impact, swim efficiently underwater, and relaunch into air. This thrust combines programmable stiffness with snapping instabilities so a single morphable wing can absorb entry loads, row underwater, and release stored elastic energy for repeated takeoff.

Hydrodynamic Intelligence in Schools of Robotic Fish

Efficient individual swimmers can become resilient fleets by exploiting each other's wakes. This thrust maps leader-follower and lattice formations with embedded flow sensing, PIV, and sim-to-real learning to discover energy-saving robotic schooling behaviors.

Thrust 2: Reconfigurable space robotics

Thrust 3: Self-triggered devices

Thrust 4: Large-deformable, self-sensing artificial muscles

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