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About

Lei Shao is pioneering the next generation of soft robotics, merging bioinspired design with advanced actuation to create machines that move, sense, and adapt like living organisms. His core research spans electromagnetic soft robots, textile-based actuators, and intelligent sensor integration, with a focus on achieving unprecedented operational dimensionality and self-sensing adaptability. Shao’s most impactful work includes the development of self-vectoring electromagnetic soft robots (53 citations) that achieve agile, multi-degree-of-freedom locomotion, and encoded sewing soft textile robots (51 citations) that enable highly programmable shape-morphing. He has also engineered soft–rigid hybrid actuator fingers (21 citations) that replicate the dexterity and tactile feedback of human hands, and an intelligent spinal soft robot (17 citations) with self-sensing capabilities for adaptive interaction. His contributions extend to collaborative robots for intuitive human teaching, untethered cable-driven quadruped robots, and wireless-powered capsule robots for medical applications. With over 180 total citations and a rapidly growing portfolio, Shao is establishing himself as a leading innovator in soft robotics, pushing the boundaries of what soft machines can achieve in healthcare, human-robot collaboration, and beyond.