Papers
11
Total Citations
199
H-Index
7
About
Qiukai Qi is pioneering the emerging field of edible and sustainable soft robotics, where robots are designed not only to function but to safely biodegrade—or even be consumed. His research spans bioinspired actuation, soft grippers, and transient robotic systems, drawing deep inspiration from nature’s most dexterous organisms. Qi’s most cited work, “Towards edible robots and robotic food” (2024, 50 citations), introduces a visionary concept that merges robotics with food science. He further demonstrated this with an edible, optically modulating shape memory oleogel composite (2023), a biodegradable artificial muscle that responds to environmental cues. His sea-anemone-inspired bistable gripper (2021, 42 citations) and octopus-inspired hierarchical suction gripper (2025, 39 citations) showcase his talent for translating biological intelligence into multifunctional, adaptive soft robots. Qi also developed PEGrip, a plant-tendril-inspired passive entanglement gripper enabling fail-safe grasping, and explored undulation locomotion in granular media using anisotropic scales inspired by sand vipers. His work on wrinkled soft sensors with variable afferent morphology (2019) advances tactile sensing through morphological computation. With growing citation impact and a clear trajectory toward sustainable, bioinspired, and edible robotics, Qiukai Qi is shaping the future of environmentally harmonious machines.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Towards edible robots and robotic food50 citations · 2024
- 2A Sea-Anemone-Inspired, Multifunctional, Bistable Gripper42 citations · 2021
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- 7Wrinkled Soft Sensor With Variable Afferent Morphology10 citations · 2019
- 8The rise of transient robotics7 citations · 2024
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