Shaping the future of robotics through materials innovation

Dear Colleagues,

We just published the comment Shaping the future of robotics through materials innovation in Nature Materials:

Rothemund P., Kim. Y., Heisser R. H., Zhao X., Shepherd R. F., Keplinger C. Shaping the future of robotics through materials innovation. Nature Materials 20, 1582-1587 (2021)

In this comment, we discuss how functional soft materials can revolutionize robotics. We also describe thrusts of research to address issues that currently stand in the way of a wide-spread use of functional soft materials in real-world robotic systems.