Zechen Xiong

Columbia University, Earth Island Institute

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Zechen Xiong is a rising star in soft robotics, whose work redefines the boundaries of speed, structure, and dexterity in compliant machines. His primary research areas include bioinspired robotics, elastic instability, and soft deployable structures. Xiong’s most significant contribution is the development of a fast, untethered soft robotic crawler that gallops at 313 mm/s (1.56 body lengths per second), outperforming most reported soft crawlers by leveraging elastic instability—a principle inspired by the rapid gaits of cheetahs and wolves. This work, published in 2023, has already garnered 18 citations for its breakthrough in speed and autonomy. He has also pioneered a fractal-inspired soft deployable structure with hierarchically coupled thin walls, offering new pathways for metamaterials and medical devices, and introduced a bionic soft gripper that uses elastic instability to rapidly grasp large-span objects like fabric, solving a long-standing tradeoff between grip span and closing speed. With each paper pushing the limits of what soft robots can achieve, Xiong is establishing himself as a key innovator in creating faster, more agile, and more functional soft robotic systems.