ArticleScience advances2023
Physically intelligent autonomous soft robotic maze escaper.
Article in Science advances, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed.
- Material-architecture-manufacture integrated strategy for piezoelectric metamaterials with mechanical protection and self-powered sensing.Science advances · 2026Article
- High Center-of-Mass, Multi-Legged Soft Robots Powered by Geometrically Encoded Liquid Crystal Elastomer Arc Appendages.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2026Article
- Progress and perspectives in soft robotics for surgery and rehabilitation.Journal of robotic surgery · 2026Review
- Single-parameter programmed thermomechanical actuation via 3D-printed helical director fields in liquid crystal elastomers.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Twirlbot: Tumbleweed-inspired rolling robot.Science advances · 2026Article
- Feline-Inspired Robot Enabled by Combustion-Driven Actuators for Agile Motion and High-Payload Obstacle Traversal.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Microscale Architectures for Intelligent Soft Robotics: From Functional Microneedles to Biointegrated Wearable Systems.Nano-micro letters · 2026Review
- Multimaterial 3D printed soft robots with embedded actuation and sensing.Science advances · 2025Article
- Robotic ray driven by periodic ring snapping.Innovation (Cambridge (Mass.)) · 2025Article
- Multistable thin-shell metastructures for multiresponsive reconfigurable metabots.Science advances · 2025Article
- Autonomous codesign and fabrication of multistimuli-responsive material systems.Science advances · 2025Article
- Bioinspired Intelligent Soft Robotics: From Multidisciplinary Integration to Next-Generation Intelligence.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Review
- Aerial Track-Guided Autonomous Soft Ring Robot.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- An autonomous snapper featuring adaptive actuation and embodied intelligence.Science advances · 2025Article
- Exploring Brain Size Asymmetry and Its Relationship with Predation Risk Among Chinese Anurans.Biology · 2025Article
- Embedded Physical Intelligence in Liquid Crystalline Polymer Actuators and Robots.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2025Review
- Untethered soft actuators for soft standalone robotics.Nature communications · 2024Review
- Sidewinder-Inspired Self-Adjusting, Lateral-Rolling Soft Robots for Autonomous Terrain Exploration.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2024Article
- Self-sustainable autonomous soft actuators.Communications chemistry · 2024Review
- Defected twisted ring topology for autonomous periodic flip-spin-orbit soft robot.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Autonomous maze navigation is appealing yet challenging in soft robotics for exploring priori unknown unstructured environments, as it often requires human-like brain that integrates onboard power, sensors, and control for computational intelligence. Here, we report harnessing both geometric and materials intelligence in liquid crystal elastomer-based self-rolling robots for autonomous escaping from complex multichannel mazes without the need for human-like brain. The soft robot powered by environmental thermal energy has asymmetric geometry with hybrid twisted and helical shapes on two ends. Such geometric asymmetry enables built-in active and sustained self-turning capabilities, unlike its symmetric counterparts in either twisted or helical shapes that only demonstrate transient self-turning through untwisting. Combining self-snapping for motion reflection, it shows unique curved zigzag paths to avoid entrapment in its counterparts, which allows for successful self-escaping from various challenging mazes, including mazes on granular terrains, mazes with narrow gaps, and even mazes with in situ changing layouts.
Identifiers
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.