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About

Wu Bao is a rising star in the field of soft robotics and active materials, with a focused expertise in liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) and their application in light-powered autonomous systems. His major contributions center on harnessing self-oscillation—a phenomenon where materials vibrate persistently under constant illumination—to create novel, untethered machines. Bao’s most impactful work, a 2025 study on self-oscillation-driven locomotion in an LCE-based robot (27 citations), demonstrates how constant light can generate continuous, lifelike motion without complex control systems. He further advanced this principle by developing an LCE-based generator that converts these self-oscillations into electrical power (25 citations), opening pathways for self-sustaining soft devices. His earlier work on a light-powered self-translation system using an asymmetric friction slider (2024) laid the groundwork for these breakthroughs, addressing key challenges in applying active materials to real-world machines. With his research bridging fundamental physics and practical engineering, Bao is shaping a future where soft robots crawl and generate energy directly from ambient light.