From Instability-Driven Fabrication to Soft Robotics: A Mechanics-First Approach

A central theme of our research is that interfacial flows and mechanical instabilities offer powerful and scalable routes for generating structure and function in soft materials. Through studies of viscous–elastic coupling in curable liquids and nonlinear deformation in slender bodies, we have shown how controlled buckling, coiling, and pattern formation can be harnessed as both fabrication tools and mechanisms for complex actuation and motion. I will discuss how these instability-based principles have enabled emerging applications ranging from programmable filaments to deployable architectures and "smart" elastoactive structures. Advances in modeling, fabrication, and materials characterization have reshaped the landscape of instability engineering, revealing new opportunities and challenges in using mechanics as a design language for robust, adaptive, and scalable soft robotic systems. I will highlight representative progress across these areas and outline how continued exploration of instability-driven behavior may open avenues for embedding sensing, responsiveness, and control directly into material architectures. I will close by briefly considering how these mechanically grounded principles could ultimately support primitive forms of programmable robotic matter, where structure, actuation, and functionality begin to merge at the material level.