Ziyu Ren wins ETH Silver Medal

Stuttgart – Dr. Ziyu Ren, a postdoctoral researcher in the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, won a top award from the leading Swiss University, ETH Zurich. Acknowledging his outstanding doctoral thesis, which he completeded in 2022 at the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at ETH, Ziyu Ren received an ETH Silver Medal. Such a medal is awarded to less than one in ten doctoral students.

“I am very excited I have been awarded the ETH medal. I am very honored that my doctoral committee valued my research so highly. I will continue to work hard and push the boundaries of the miniature robotics research field,“ says Ren.

Ziyu Ren’s research focusses on the design, fabrication, and control of small-scale soft robots. His thesis “Advanced Multimodal Locomotion and Multifunctionality of Soft-bodied Millirobots” looks at small-scale mobile robots at the millimeter scale and their many potential applications: from minimally invasive surgery, lab-on-chip tasks, and environmental monitoring. The application of the soft smart materials endows the millirobots with richer behaviors and functions than the rigid robot designs. Their physical adaptability to a changing environment is also better. However, existing soft millirobots still lack the capability to locomote in complex environments and perform multifunctional tasks required in real-world applications.

Ren’s doctoral dissertation was aimed at solving great challenges in the locomotion and multifunctionality of soft-bodied millirobots. By proposing a micro-assembly-based microfabrication method, he greatly broadened the achievable design space of magnetic soft millirobots with potential biomedical applications. By taking inspiration from nature, Ziyu Ren utilized the interaction between the soft-bodied deformation and the fluidic environments to realize efficient robotic locomotion and fluid manipulation capabilities previously unachievable in miniature robots. With this strategy, he developed a jellyfish-inspired robot that can manipulate objects during propulsion by utilizing the fluid flow around the body, a sheet-shaped robot that can achieve multimodal locomotion in fluid-filled confined environments, and a soft robotic ciliated epidermis that can transport fluids near 3D surfaces.