Rui M. D. Nunes's research while affiliated with Harvard University and other places

... This is especially apparent in the case of crawling robots, as these lightweight systems can maintain surface contact by means of deforming to fit their environment [115]. Another mode of ground traversal is jumping, where potential energy is built up in some elastic element (as seen in Fig. 2c) or reaction (as seen in Fig. 2d), and released to move the robot [89,91,93,94]. This enables quick bursts of speed, which is desirable by contrast to the low speed of most soft locomotion, and allows robots to move over gaps and obstacles easily [91]. ...

... Soft robots have attracted considerable attention [1], since they offer unique opportunities in areas where conventional rigid robots are not a viable solution. Materials with good stretchability can be used for building soft robots, with examples including shape memory alloys (SMAs) [2][3][4], shape memory polymers (SMPs) [5], electro-active polymers [6], acrylic [7] and silicone elastomers (i.e., polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) [8] as well as silicone gel [4,9,10]). Soft robots that mimic the movement of animals have been explored, including a robot finger [8], soft cylindrical manipulator [11], soft gripper [12][13][14], starfish [4] and octopus tentacle [9]. Applications of soft robots for locomotion [4], bending and shape detection [11], movement detection [12], as well as temperature and strain sensing [8], have been demonstrated. ...

... The second class of these devices rely on pumps to drive fluid flow through channels. Glavan et al. created omniphobic paper by vaporphase deposition of fluorinated organosilanes [152], carved channels into the omniphobic paper with a craft cutter, and enclosed the channels with tape [147]. Thuo et al. used embossing and cut-and-stack methods to form channels in silanized paper [148]. ...

... Dynamic polymer nanocomposites (DPNs) have potential applications in electronics and energy devices such as electronic skins, soft robots, flexible circuits, sensors, and energy harvesting devices due to their flexibility, low cost, facile processing, chemical resistance, and adjustable electrical properties. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Conventional electronic devices based on metal-oxide-semiconductor systems have limited mechanical flexibility, which presents challenges in this booming era of flexible and wearable electronics. [9][10][11] Owing to the inherent advantage of being light, healable, flexible, stretchable (>50% strain), DPNs have received attention, especially with demonstrated applications in soft robotics, human motion detection, personalized healthcare monitoring, and human machine interfaces. ...

... GE Healthcare Life Sciences Whatman line provides a wide variety of paper substrates with different thicknesses for integration into microfluidics (Walsh III et al. 2017). In one study, an omniphobic paper-based open channel microfluidic system with lateral channels of dimensions 45-300 µm was carved using a craft cutter (Glavan et al. 2013). A silhouette craft cutter was used to carve microchannels on cardstock paper ( Figure 4d). ...

... Weather phenomena, animals, plants and other formations can often exhibit patterns that resemble or clearly follow a spiral ( Fig.1-inset) [17]. Classical mechanisms and continuum structures that leverage spiral mechanisms have been designed that take advantage of the energy storage potential of an unwinding motion to exert high forces, manipulate objests, or transverse terrains [18], [10], [19], [20], [21]. However, most of the robots presented by the current literature focus on manipulation or locomotion, tasks that require slowly occurring actuation. ...