The potential of liquid crystal polymers to undergo light-triggered shape changes makes them attractive for untethered bioinspired soft robots.

Mobile organisms with ability for locomotion and transportation, such as humans and other animals, utilize orchestrated actuation to perform actions. Mimicking these functionalities in synthetic, light‐responsive untethered soft‐bodied devices remains a challenge. Inspired by multitasking and mobile biological systems, an untethered soft transporter robot with controlled multidirectional locomotion with the ability of picking up, transporting, and delivering cargo driven entirely by blue light is created. The soft robot design is an ensemble of light‐responsive liquid crystalline polymers that can harness motion either collectively or individually to obtain a high degree of motion control for the execution of advanced tasks in a dry environment. Through orchestrated motion of the device's “legs”, single displacement strides, which exceed 4 mm and can be taken in any direction, allow for locomotion around objects. Untethered cargo transportation is demonstrated by a pickup and release mechanism using the device's “arms”. This strategy demonstrates the constructive harnessing of orchestrated motion in assemblies of established actuators, performing complex functions, mimicking constructive behavior seen in nature.

Design guidelines to aid the choice of azobenzene derivatives for light responsive polymer actuators in dry and wet environments.

In recent years, light-responsive liquid crystal (LC) polymers have been studied as promising materials for the fabrication of untethered soft actuators. The underwater behavior of these advanced materials has, however, been rarely investigated. This paper reports on the fabrication of light-responsive amphibious LC-actuators via direct ink writing (DIW). The actuators present two underwater deformation modes triggered by different stimuli. Temperature induces contraction/expansion and light induces bending/ unbending. Unexpectedly, temperature can regulate the bending directionality, giving the material additional versatility to its deformation modes. These findings serve as a toolbox for the fabrication of light-responsive actuators via DIW that operate in air and underwater.

Arbitrary shape (re)programming is appealing for fabricating untethered shape‐morphing photo‐actuators with intricate configurations and features. We present re‐programmable light‐responsive thermoplastic actuators with arbitrary initial shapes through spray‐coating of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) with an azobenzene‐doped light‐responsive liquid crystal network (LCN). The initial geometry of the actuator is controlled by thermally shaping and fixing the thermoplastic PET, allowing arbitrary shapes, including origami‐like folds and left‐ and right‐handed helicity within a single sample. The thermally fixed geometries can be reversibly actuated through light exposure, with fast, reversible area‐specific actuation such as winding, unwinding and unfolding. By shape re‐programming, the same sample can be re‐designed and light‐actuated again. The strategy presented here demonstrates easy fabrication of mechanically robust, recyclable, photo‐responsive actuators with highly tuneable geometries and actuation modes.