Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Ziyu Ren is a pioneering researcher in soft robotics and miniature magnetic machines, with work spanning bio-inspired locomotion, untethered microrobotics, and biomedical applications. His research addresses one of the field's central challenges: endowing small-scale robots with sophisticated functionalities despite the severe constraints imposed by miniaturization. Ren's most celebrated contribution is his jellyfish-inspired soft millirobot (2019, 571 citations), which demonstrated that untethered miniature swimmers could achieve multiple functionalities simultaneously — a landmark achievement in soft robotics. Building on this, he has pioneered voxelated magnetic soft machines (2021, 288 citations) and linked microactuator networks (2021, 127 citations), pushing programmable shape-morphing capabilities toward the sub-millimeter scale. His work on adaptive multimodal locomotion in fluid-filled confined spaces (2021, 184 citations) directly targets future wireless medical robots navigating the human body's intricate internal environments. Beyond magnetic microrobotics, Ren has made meaningful contributions to soft pneumatic grippers and bioinspired fish locomotion, demonstrating exceptional breadth. His innovations in fabrication — including direct laser writing and multimaterial heterogeneous assembly — have helped define the technological toolkit of the field. With over 1,800 cumulative citations, Ren stands as a leading voice shaping the future of miniature soft robotics.