Bioinspired Design of Light‐Powered Crawling, Squeezing, and Jumping Untethered Soft Robot

Abstract Light has been recently intensively explored to power robots. However, most existing light‐driven robots have limited locomotion modalities, with constrained locomotion capabilities. A light‐powered soft robot with a bioinspired design is demonstrated, which can crawl on ground, squeeze its way through a small channel, and jump over a barrier. The arch‐shaped robot is made up of liquid crystal elastomer–carbon nanotube composite. When a light source with a power intensity of around 1.57 W cm⁻² is scanned over the surface of the robot, it deforms and crawls forward. With an increase in the light scanning speed, it can deform sufficiently to pass through a channel 25% lower than its body height. Subjected to light irradiation, it can also deform to a closed loop, gradually store elastic energy, and suddenly release it to jump over a wall or onto a step quickly, with a jumping distance around eight times its body length and jumping height around five times its body height. Mathematical models for quantitatively understanding the multimodal locomotion of this light‐powered soft robot are also presented.