A 6.4-gram soft robot carries its own power to walk, swim and glide

A 6.4-gram experimental robot can travel on land, move across water and descend from a height with its membranes spread out. It carries its power supply rather than trailing a cable. The Tsinghua University research, published on July 29, 2026, explores how a tiny machine can change not only its shape but also the mechanical response of its moving parts.

Transforming robots already existed in this group’s work. In 2025, Yihui Zhang’s team demonstrated structures that could continuously reshape and then hold their new configuration, including a 25-gram wireless ground-and-air robot measuring nine centimetres long. The later study builds on that shape-locking approach rather than introducing transformation itself.

Its additional ingredient is a separately adjustable artificial muscle. Think of a flexible ruler whose posture and springiness can be changed independently. The skeleton establishes a configuration; electrically driven soft material supplies repeated motion. Altering stiffness changes the response, allowing different movement characteristics without simply demanding more of the same action. This is a mechanical design strategy, not an autonomous robot brain.

Two demonstrations make the distinction tangible. A 1.8-gram tethered machine switches between quadruped and humanoid forms, freeing its front limbs for manipulation. The untethered design takes inspiration from a sugar glider. It measures five centimetres long when folded, with the battery and control hardware included in its 6.4-gram mass. On land it can cover roughly its own length each second. Its aerial mode is a controlled descent using deployed membranes, not powered flight.

Getting rid of the supply cable required miniature power electronics. A roughly one-gram circuit boosts the battery voltage to drive the soft muscles. The architecture nevertheless involves trade-offs: heating material to adjust stiffness consumes additional energy, and improved motion in one setting does not mean every performance measure improves together.

For readers outside a robotics laboratory, the interesting prospect is a small machine that changes its physical setup when the surroundings change. It is not yet an everyday inspection product. In an interview with DeepTech, first author Shiwei Xu described remaining work on durability, power electronics and sensing. Present movements largely follow preset instructions; adaptation in a real environment needs feedback as well as a flexible body.

Original paper publication date: July 29, 2026.

Edited: November 14, 2026, 06:36 Beijing time / November 13, 2026, 17:36 EST.