Publications Repository - Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf

Acting at high speed enables creatures to survive in their harsh natural environments. They developed strategies for fast actuation that inspire technological embodiments like soft robots. Here, we demonstrate a series of simulation-guided lightweight, durable, and untethered soft-bodied robots performing large-degree deformations at unprecedentedly high frequencies of up to 200 Hz, driven at very low magnetic fields down to 0.5 mT, and exhibit a record high specific energy density of 10.8 kJ/m3/mT. Unforeseen nonlinear behavior of our robots is observed in experiments and analyzed by simulation, guiding future designs of soft-bodied robots. Our robots walk, swim, levitate, transport cargo, and can even catch a living fly unharmed. Such ultrafast soft robots with high-frequency oscillations can rapidly adapt to varying environmental conditions, inspire biomedical applications in confined environment, and serve as model systems to develop complex movements inspired by nature.