Robotic Materials

Robotic Materials is a research group within the Department of Materials at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. The group was established in October 2023 under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Hedan Bai, who holds the position of Assistant Professor at the Department of Materials (D-MATL). The group is located at Hönggerbergring 64, 8093 Zurich, within the ETH Zurich Hönggerberg campus.

The group pursues a bottom-up approach to robotics, developing functional soft materials that embed physical intelligence directly into the material itself rather than relying purely on external computation and actuators. Core research areas include soft materials with embedded actuation functions, sensing capabilities, and integrated control. By blurring the boundary between autonomous materials and robotic systems, the group aims to enable robots with unusual form factors and unconventional physical capabilities that are not accessible through traditional rigid robot design.

Specific research themes include soft optical materials and devices, sustainable polymers and devices for robotics, and distributed addressable robotic materials. The group's flagship project is ColorfulAct, funded by a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant awarded to Prof. Bai in September 2025. ColorfulAct aims to develop distributed, addressable robotic actuating materials using wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) of light — drawing a parallel between the bandwidth of light and the connectivity of artificial intelligence nodes. The project seeks to establish building blocks of physical intelligence by controlling independent actuating units through different wavelengths of light delivered through a single optical channel.

The team is international and interdisciplinary, composed of material scientists, chemists, roboticists, and engineers. The group collaborates with researchers across ETH Zurich's materials and engineering departments. As a university research group, Robotic Materials does not commercialize products directly but publishes findings in peer-reviewed journals and engages with the global soft robotics and smart materials research community.