News

• [6/18/2026] [book chapter] Our book chapter 'Wireless Miniature Medical Soft Robots Inside Our Body' has just been published in the new book 'Soft Material Robotic Systems' by Springer Nature. This chapter summarizes Tianlu's PhD work at the Max Planck Institute. Happy to contribute to this alongside my colleagues Dr. Mingtong Li and Dr. Ziyu Ren, and my PhD advisor, Dr. Metin Sitti!

• [6/16/2026] [paper] Our paper 'Stiffness- and Buoyancy-Tunable Underwater Object Manipulation with a Detachable End Effector' has been accepted by IROS this year. Congrats to Munir and all the authors!

• [6/10/2026] [outreach] We welcome Jesse Xu, Ian Semillano, Leiyao Chang, and Kai McDevitt to SAIL for summer research!

• [5/17/2026] [workshop] Our workshop titled "Miniature Multiterrain and Multimodal Locomotion: from Biology to Robotics" has been accepted by the 2026 IROS Organizing Committee! Look forward to seeing you in Pittsburgh, PA, this fall!

• [5/5/2026] [award] Tianlu received the OVPRS Award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research & Creative Work!

• [4/29/2026] [invited talk] Tianlu gave an invited talk at the Symposium SB06-Emerging Materials for Micro/Nanoscale Machines and Robots at the Materials Research Society Spring Meeting in Honolulu. Thanks, Dr. Li, for the invitation!

• [4/24/2026] [paper] Our paper 'Liquid Jetting-Based Miniature Robotic Navigation in Confined Fluidic Spaces' is now published on Advanced Intelligent Systems! Congrats to Debasish!

• [4/23/2026] [award/funding] Very excited to share that our group receives the NSF CAREER Award from the Foundational Research in Robotics (FRR) Program!

• [4/13/2026] [graduation] Congrats to Munir for successfully defending his master thesis! Munir will be the first student graduated from the SAIL lab!

• [4/6/2026] [invited talk] Tianlu gave an invited talk at the Soft Robotics Meets the Sea: Novel Robot Design for Harsh Environments workshop at the RoboSoft 2026, Kanazawa, Japan. Thanks, Dr. Xiong, for the invitation!

• [4/1/2026] [award/funding] Tianlu received the Career Development Award from the American Heart Association (AHA)! Thanks, AHA, for supporting our research on miniature soft robotics towards new solutions for cardiovascular and neurovascular diseases!

• [3/3/2026] [invited talk] Tianlu gave an invited talk for MIE1299 Guest Lecture at the University of Toronto. Thanks, Dr. Chirarattananon, for the invitation!

• [2/3/2026] [outreach] Happy to share our research on miniature soft robotics with the local community on UH Research Day at the Hawaiʻi State Capitol.

• [1/24/2026] [award] Congrats to our lab alumnus Matthew Fujioka for being selected as the HCES Student Engineer of the Year for 2026!

• [1/16/2026] [invited talk] Tianlu was invited to give a talk at the MAE seminar of UCLA. Thanks, Dr. Yoshida, for the invitation!

• [1/12-15, 2026] [conference] Tianlu attended the GRC Robotics in Ventura, CA, and shared our most recent works on high-performance miniature robotic locomotion and functions.

• [1/1/2026] [appointment] Tianlu becomes a Cooperating Faculty at the Department of Ocean and Resources Engineering and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at The Queen's Medical Center. Look forward to translating our miniature robotics techniques for real-world ocean and medical applications!

• [1/1/2026] [award/funding] Debasish is selected by the Office of Innovation & Commercialization as an Office of Naval Research - P2P Program Fellow of the 2026 Cohort. Congratulations!

Before 2026:

• [Feb. 28, 2024] Tianlu was invited to deliver a seminar talk at the Department of Ocean and Resources Engineering in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) [seminar link].

• [February 2024] Tianlu talked about cutting-edge soft robotics techniques for marine conservations at the AI for Good webinar organized by the International Telecommunications Union [webinar link][UH news].

• [November, 2023] Our HASEL-jellyfish robot has been recorded and reported by WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk).

• [November, 2023] Our collaborative review article about the clinical translation of wireless soft medical devices has been accepted by Nature Reviews Bioengineering. Stay tuned for our publication.

• [June, 2023] Tianlu has accepted the faculty offer from UH Manoa and will join and lead the SAIL from 2024!

• [April 25, 2023] Our work on using the jellyfish-like robotic platform for environmental applications has been reported by Forbes News! Please check it out.

• [April 12, 2023] Our paper titled "A versatile jellyfish-like robotic platform for effective underwater propulsion and manipulation" is now published in Science Advances!

• [December 14, 2022] Please check out my doctoral dissertation, 'Advanced Miniature Soft Robotic Systems' now online at ETH Research Collection!

• [September 15, 2022] Our work on medical Stentbot has been reported by MIT Technology Review - China!

• [August 25, 2022] I gave a talk titled 'Miniature soft robotics for biomechanics and biomedicine' at the Robotics Seminar at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

• [August 18, 2022] I received the Best Poster Award at the Gordon Research Conference on Robotics in Ventura, California!

• [August 1, 2022] Our paper titled "Adaptive Wireless Millirobotic Locomotion Into Distal Vasculature" is now published in Nature Communications!

• [July 7, 2022] I am the recipient of the EUROMECH Young Researcher Award at the 11th European Solid Mechanics Conference (ESMC 2022)! Please check out our department news here.

• [May 5, 2021] Our paper titled "Effect of Body Stiffness Distribution on Larval Fish–like Efficient Undulatory Swimming" is now published in Science Advances!

• [March 15, 2021] Our recent work on the effect of body stiffness distribution on larval fish-like robot swimming has been officially accepted by Science Advances! Stay tuned for our publication!

• [June 19, 2020] Our paper titled "Ultrasound-Guided Wireless Tubular Robotic Anchoring System" is now published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters! This work will also be presented at IROS this year.

• [June 26, 2019] Our paper titled "A Magnetically-Actuated Untethered Jellyfish-Inspired Soft Milliswimmer" is awarded the Best Paper Award at Robotics: Science and Systems 2019!