Insects maintain remarkable agility after incurring severe injuries or wounds. Although robots driven by rigid actuators have demonstrated agile locomotion and manipulation, most of them lack animal-like robustness against unexpected damage. Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) are a class of muscle-like soft transducers that have enabled nimble aerial, terrestrial, and aquatic robotic locomotion comparable to that of rigid actuators. However, unlike muscles, DEAs suffer local dielectric breakdowns that often cause global device failure. These local defects severely limit DEA performance, lifetime, and size scalability. We developed DEAs that can endure more than 100 punctures while maintaining high bandwidth (>400 hertz) and power density (>700 watt per kilogram)—sufficient for supporting energetically expensive locomotion such as flight. We fabricated electroluminescent DEAs for visualizing electrode connectivity under actuator damage. When the DEA suffered severe dielectric breakdowns that caused device failure, we demonstrated a laser-assisted repair method for isolating the critical defects and recovering performance. These results culminate in an aerial robot that can endure critical actuator and wing damage while maintaining similar accuracy in hovering flight. Our work highlights that soft robotic systems can embody animal-like agility and resilience—a critical biomimetic capability for future robots to interact with challenging environments.

Ionic spiderwebs emulate the capturing strategies of a spider with a single pair of threads based on electrostatics.

Existing gels are mostly polar, whose nature limits their role in soft devices. The intermolecular interactions of nonpolar polymer-liquid system are typically weak, which makes the gel brittle. Here we report highly soft and transparent nonpolar organogels. Even though their elements are only carbon and hydrogen, their elastic modulus, transparency, and stretchability are comparable to common soft hydrogels. A key strategy is introducing aromatic interaction into the polymer-solvent system, resulting in a high swelling ratio that enables efficient plasticization of the polymer networks. As a proof of applicability, soft perovskite nanocomposites are synthesized, where the nonpolar environment of organogels enables stable formation and preservation of highly concentrated perovskite nanocrystals, showing high photoluminescence efficiency (~99.8%) after water-exposure and environmental stabilities against air, water, acid, base, heat, light, and mechanical deformation. Their superb properties enable the demonstration of soft electroluminescent devices that stably emit bright and pure green light under diverse deformations.

Soft artificial electroreceptors inspired by electroreception mechanism of rays can locate objects in a noncontact manner.