Miniature deep-sea morphable robot with multimodal locomotion

Research on miniature deep-sea robots is an emerging field focused on the development of deployable, compact devices capable of interacting with the unique environments and organisms of the deep ocean. In this study, we present a design strategy for a centimeter-scale deep-sea soft actuator, weighing 16 grams, that incorporates bistable chiral metamaterials and tube-sealed shape memory alloys. According to our design, the increased modulus induced by the hydrostatic pressure was used to achieve a higher snapping velocity of the bistable chiral unit, thus lifting the actuator's performance. We showed that the actuator can produce undistorted cyclic motions at various depths in the deep sea. Subsequently, we…