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About

Pengchun Li is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of soft robotics and space exploration, whose work is redefining how robots interact with extreme environments. His primary research areas include bioinspired soft robotics, space debris removal, and adaptive control systems for deformable structures. Li’s most impactful contribution is his comprehensive review on soft robotics for space applications (173 citations), which systematically charted the progress, challenges, and prospects of deploying compliant robots in orbit—a foundational reference for the field. He has also engineered a novel flytrap-inspired bistable origami gripper (29 citations) for rapid active debris removal, leveraging nature’s snap-through instability to create a lightweight, high-speed capture mechanism. This work, featured in *Advanced Intelligent Systems*, addresses the critical problem of orbital clutter. Additionally, Li developed a vine-plant-inspired soft robot with coordinated control (34 citations), demonstrating how tip-extending growth can enable navigation through cluttered environments. His recent goal-oriented control strategies for soft growing robots (2025) push the boundaries of dynamic manipulation. With a clear trajectory from fundamental bioinspiration to practical space hardware, Li’s research is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of adaptive, resilient robots beyond Earth.