Bioinspired Morphology‐Decoupled Soft Gripper with Enhanced Bidirectional Grasping Capability (Adv. Sci. 34/2026)

Bioinspired Morphology-Decoupled Soft Gripper The integrated handling of dynamic and static targets remains a formidable challenge for soft grippers. Although cross-modal grippers combine active and passive modes, they are constrained by inherent conflicts among precision, speed and strength, leading to bidirectional performance degradation. Designing soft grippers capable of both dynamic and static target grasping is a widely acknowledged challenge in the field of soft robotics. In their Research Article (DOI: 10.1002/advs.75073), Juntian Qu and co-workers propose a strategy that utilizes a dual-mode morphological configuration to decouple cross-modal grasping, achieving synergistic integration of the two grasping functions. In cage configuration, the gripper can capture high-speed dynamic non-cooperative targets, demonstrating remarkable potential for aerospace applications. In parallel configuration, the gripper can gently grasp a variety of complex objects, offering solutions for operations in complex unstructured environments such as underwater grasping. This work represents a remarkable advancement in cross-modal grasping for soft robots.