Wenqi Hu

Research Scientist

I worked on the opto-fluidics and microrobotics as a PhD at University of Hawaii at Manoa. And I'm currently working on functionalizing magnetic microrobots. My interest is the bio-medical application of microrobots. I am also interested in using miniaturize robot system to research the small-scale animals.

The annual award, in Design & Elektronik, WEKA-Fachmedien 2018
Günter Petzow Prize, in Max Planck Institute for Intelligence Systems 2018
Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship 2016
Best Ph.D. graduate, in School of Engineering, University of Hawai´i-Manoā 2014
Second Prize, in NIST Mobile Microrobotics Challenge 2014
Cover issue and top 10% collection, in Lab on a Chip 2013
Second Prize, in Breakthrough Innovation Challenge, UH Shidler College of Business 2013 Second Prize, in NIST Mobile Microrobotics Challenge 2012
Best Conference Paper Award Finalist in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and 2012 Automation (ICRA) 2012

PhD: Electrical Engineering, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA, 2014
BS: Electrical Engineering, University of Electronic Sci. & Tech. of China, China, 2009

Shape-programmable soft-bodied millirobots with multimodal locomotion

At small scales, shape-programmable magnetic materials have significant potential to achieve mechanical functionalities that are unattainable by traditional miniature machines. Unfortunately, these materials have only been programmed for a small number of specific applications, as previous work can only re...

Wenqi Hu Guo Zhan Lum Xiaoguang Dong

28 results (View BibTeX file of all listed publications)

2018

Small-scale soft-bodied robot with multimodal locomotion

Hu, W., Lum, G. Z., Mastrangeli, M., Sitti, M.

Nature, 554, pages: 81-85, Nature, January 2018 (article)

Abstract

Untethered small-scale (from several millimetres down to a few micrometres in all dimensions) robots that can non-invasively access confined, enclosed spaces may enable applications in microfactories such as the construction of tissue scaffolds by robotic assembly1, in bioengineering such as single-cell manipulation and biosensing2, and in healthcare3,4,5,6 such as targeted drug delivery4 and minimally invasive surgery3,5. Existing small-scale robots, however, have very limited mobility because they are unable to negotiate obstacles and changes in texture or material in unstructured environments7,8,9,10,11,12,13. Of these small-scale robots, soft robots have greater potential to realize high mobility via multimodal locomotion, because such machines have higher degrees of freedom than their rigid counterparts14,15,16. Here we demonstrate magneto-elastic soft millimetre-scale robots that can swim inside and on the surface of liquids, climb liquid menisci, roll and walk on solid surfaces, jump over obstacles, and crawl within narrow tunnels. These robots can transit reversibly between different liquid and solid terrains, as well as switch between locomotive modes. They can additionally execute pick-and-place and cargo-release tasks. We also present theoretical models to explain how the robots move. Like the large-scale robots that can be used to study locomotion17, these soft small-scale robots could be used to study soft-bodied locomotion produced by small organisms.

link (url) DOI Project Page [BibTex]