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Engineers at ���񱦵� have designed a new, rubber-like film that can leap high into the air like a grasshopper—all on its own and without needing outside intervention. Just heat it up and watch it jump! The researchers describe their achievement Jan. 18 in the journal Science Advances. They say that similar materials could one day help embody “soft robots” (those that don’t need gears or other hard components to move) to leap or lift.

Hayden Fowler, a graduate student in Gallogly Professor Timothy White’s Responsive and Programmable Materials Group, is the first author on a research paper published in Advanced Materials concerning the temperature-independent electrical actuation of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs), which are soft, stimuli-responsive materials with potential applications in soft robotics, artificial muscles and more.