Biography
Soft robotic materials, structures, and systems
Jiahe Liao is a robotics researcher specializing in soft robotic materials and structures. He received his Ph.D. in robotics from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied with Carmel Majidi. His doctoral research pioneered liquid metal actuators for soft artificial muscles that are compact, scalable, energy-efficient, and safe for human interaction. Dr. Liao is currently a visiting scholar in the research group of Michael Dickey at North Carolina State University.
Dr. Liao’s research on soft robotic actuators and materials has helped establish new physical principles that can be useful for human-facing and environment-interactive robotic systems that require material compliance and energy autonomy. He is particularly interested in connecting material-level physics with system-level robotic functions to create “soft machines” that can interact more naturally with the physical world.
These discoveries from Dr. Liao’s research have potential applications in human–machine interfaces (e.g., wearable devices, stretchable electronics, and bioelectronics), biomedical systems (e.g., rehabilitation devices and surgical instruments), and industrial and field robotics (e.g., manufacturing and agricultural robotics). This research can lead to technologies that improve healthcare, assist people in physically demanding tasks, and help make robots safer in everyday environments.
Dr. Jiahe Liao (2026)
Jiahe is pronounced JAH-her (rhymes with father).
This research answers a fundamental question in robotics: how do we create motion and shape change in robots? Can we do it with some of the softest materials in nature?
For centuries, machines have been built from rigid materials and structures. But the real world is often soft and unpredictable. Soft materials let machines stretch, conform, absorb impact, distribute force, and adapt through the body itself. This makes robots safer.
AI is making machines smarter. But are we physically safer with more robots around us? In physical terms, safer robots may need bodies that are softer, more compliant, and more like us.
A trajectory across continents
Originally from Taiwan, Dr. Liao has built a research career across Asia, America, and Europe. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from National Taipei University. His early interest in connecting physical hardware, computation, and human interfaces led to a Taiwanese patent on neuromuscular stimulation devices. After studying at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and earning a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in robotics, he pursued postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany, and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Trained across continents, Dr. Liao brings a broad perspective to robotics research across materials, structures, energy, and interactions with the physical world.
Studies have shown that moving between countries often leads to more influential research—when doors remain open.
See “Researchers who change country produce more influential work,” The Economist (2017), and Sugimoto et al., “Scientists have most impact when they’re free to move,” Nature (2017).
Dr. Liao is an active contributor to the fields of soft robotics, soft materials, and soft actuators. He has served as a reviewer for academic journals and conferences, including Science Advances, Nature Communications, Advanced Materials Interfaces, Physical Review Applied, Materials Advances, npj Flexible Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics, IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics, and IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.
Dr. Liao’s research has also influenced independent studies across fundamental areas of soft materials research. His work has been cited in international patent applications.
Robotics Research
Expanding robotic capability through physical intelligence
Robots are intelligent machines. How they safely interact with the physical world remains a major challenge in the field. A main reason is that building a robotic system that is mechanically compatible with human bodies or natural environments, while delivering useful robotic capabilities, still presents substantial engineering challenges. Conventional robotic systems are built from structural, actuation, sensing, and power components. Soft robotics, on the other hand, can achieve functions similar to those of living animals. Often inspired by nature, these systems can stretch, bend, inflate, compress, grip objects, and adapt their geometric and physical properties to dynamic environments in everyday life.
What makes a robot safe? A robot is safer when it is less likely to harm people or the environment. For instance, it can be built from compliant materials with mechanical properties closer to human tissue, and be powered without dangerous voltages, high currents, or strong magnetic fields.
In this sense, robots become safer when they function less like unnatural rigid machines and more like human bodies.
Dr. Liao’s research focuses on expanding robotic capability through soft materials. How can we build a soft robot that contracts like a muscle, converts energy, or morphs into different shapes? To answer these questions, Dr. Liao designs soft robots that mimic biological functions, including muscle-like actuation, shape morphing, energy harvesting and storage, and adaptive behavior in complex environments. His work contributes to the next generation of robots by building function directly into their physical structures.
Soft actuators and
artificial muscles
Artificial muscles give robots a more natural way to move, deform, and adapt to complex environments. Just like natural muscles, these soft actuators are compliant, efficient, and safe for direct human interaction. These soft materials convert energy into muscle-like motion without relying on traditional rigid motors, gears, or high-voltage systems.
Controllable surface tension
contraction
An artificial muscle made from liquid metal contracts like natural muscle.
From Jiahe Liao and colleagues. Values are approximate.
Robot “muscles”
driven by liquid metal
tension
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Driving mechanismElectrochemical
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Driving voltage1 volt
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Size1 mm or smaller
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Force (Normalized)0.5 MPa
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Shape change40% change in length
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Contractile speed2,000% length/second
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Energy density0.5 kJ/m³
Dr. Liao’s doctoral and postdoctoral research helped pioneer liquid metal actuators, a new class of soft actuators that use liquid metal droplets to convert electrochemical energy into mechanical work. These actuators use surface tension to generate muscle-like shape change with high work density, fast contraction, and high operating frequencies, all at significantly lower voltages than those used by many existing soft actuators. Dr. Liao’s work also established a theoretical model linking surface tension, shape change, and force production, and introduced an enhanced, muscle-inspired architecture for structural scalability.
These ongoing advances point toward a new generation of biologically inspired soft robotic systems for wearable technologies, biomedical devices, adaptive and programmable structures, and field robots. This technology targets a practical need in human-centered robotics for high-performance, muscle-like actuation using soft materials.
Liquids are among the softest forms of matter, but few are metallic at room temperature. Gallium-based liquid metals, especially eutectic gallium–indium alloys, have become widely used because of their low toxicity and an unusual combination of properties, including extremely high surface tension.
Shape change in soft actuators can require very high voltages (in the range of 1–10 kilovolts). Liquid metal actuators, by contrast, can operate at about 1 volt, making them safer and more scalable candidates for robotic systems.
Soft robotic materials and stretchable electronics
Robots are increasingly intelligent, precise, and reliable. But they still fall short of what biological systems do all the time: conform to their surroundings, survive damage and repair themselves, and adapt their bodies to dynamic conditions. This technical gap becomes a significant challenge as robots move closer to the human body and the natural environment. Soft materials offer a way to create a new generation of robots with embodied intelligence: they allow us to build robots whose intelligence is not only programmed and computed but also physically embedded in materials that can deform, repair, and adapt.
In nature, intelligence often comes from the body’s physical structure (how the system is organized), morphology (how it is shaped), and interaction with the world (how energy is transferred).
A robot that…
Dr. Liao’s research addresses this challenge through the development of soft robotic materials with functions built directly into their physical structures. Through long-term collaborations with colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University, the Max Planck Institute, and North Carolina State University, his work has contributed to soft conductive materials for stretchable electronics and electronic skin, self-healing and reconfigurable materials for biomimetic robotics, and magnetically programmed soft materials for shape morphing. This research aims to build a future of soft machines through soft functional materials and has potential applications in healthcare, sustainability, and energy technologies.
As machine intelligence moves into the physical world and begins to interact with the body and the environment, there is growing demand for applications that can operate safely and sustainably. Soft materials bridge this gap.
Soft robotics for biointerfaces and the environment
Soft robotics becomes most valuable for real-world applications when robots are not only flexible and stretchable but also safe for contact with human skin, biological tissue, and the natural environment. Dr. Liao’s work explores how soft materials and robots can interface more naturally with bodies and environments beyond laboratory settings.
A natural interface will maximize electrical, mechanical, and chemical compatibility and minimize impact on biological tissues and the environment. Examples include wearable devices, surgical instruments, and agricultural robots.
When soft robotic materials interact with…
Dr. Liao’s collaborations in this area include soft conductive hydrogels for neuromuscular stimulation (skin and nerve interactions), biocompatibility studies of liquid-metal-embedded hydrogels (cell interactions), phototropic materials that harvest environmental energy (light and heat interactions), and robots powered by food-like substances (food and fuel interactions). Overall, this research extends soft robotics toward biologically and environmentally compatible systems built around safer, more sustainable interactions.
Publications
Publication Type
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Journals0
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Conferences3
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Theses0
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Patents2
Research Area
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Soft Robotics0Soft Materials0Soft Actuators0Liquid Metals0Soft Matter Physics0Stretchable Electronics0Bioinspired Robotics0Bioelectronics0Wearable Technology0Energy Harvesting0
npj Robotics May 26, 2026
Programmable online stiffness modulation for optimized aquatic locomotion
Nature August 4, 2025
Real-time in-situ magnetization reprogramming for soft robotics
International Conference on Manipulation, Automation and Robotics at Small Scales
July 1, 2024
Best Conference Paper Award Finalist
Energetically autonomous soft robots: An embodied actuation strategy by liquid metal metabolism
Advanced Materials June 26, 2023
Liquid metal actuators: A comparative analysis of surface tension controlled actuation
Nature Electronics March 9, 2023
A self-healing electrically conductive organogel composite
Advanced Functional Materials November 12, 2022
Liquid metal microdroplet-initiated ultra-fast polymerization of a stimuli-responsive hydrogel composite
U.S. Patent 2023 Pending US20250151621A1
Liquid crystal elastomer with integrated soft thermoelectrics for shape memory actuation and energy harvesting
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems October 23, 2022
Acoustic localization and communication using a MEMS microphone for low-cost and low-power bio-inspired underwater robots
Advanced Materials December 27, 2022
Reconfigurable electrical networks within a conductive hydrogel composite
Advanced Science July 21, 2022
Muscle-inspired linear actuators by electrochemical oxidation of liquid metal bridges
CMU Robotics Institute Ph.D. Thesis July 2022
Liquid metal actuators
Advanced Materials April 5, 2022
Liquid crystal elastomer with integrated soft thermoelectrics for shape memory actuation and energy harvesting
American Physical Society March Meeting
March 14, 2022
Bioinspired robotic actuators by electrochemical oxidation of liquid metal droplets
Nature Electronics March 1, 2021
An electrically conductive silver-poly-acrylamide-alginate hydrogel composite for soft electronics
Soft Matter December 16, 2020
Soft actuators by electrochemical oxidation of liquid metal surfaces
Advanced Energy Materials October 30, 2019
Rechargeable soft-matter EGaIn-MnO2 battery for stretchable electronics
CMU Robotics Institute Master’s Thesis in Robotics August 2018
Soft-matter artificial muscle by electrochemical surface oxidation of liquid metal
IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference March 10, 2018
Low-cost wearable human-computer interface with conductive fabric for STEAM education
Taiwan Patent 2018 Granted TW-201808378-A
Gait-adaptive control system and method for wearable drop foot electrical stimulators
Contact
For research-related inquiries, curious questions, or simply to say hello, please feel free to contact Dr. Liao:
Dr. Jiahe Liao
North Carolina State University
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
911 Partners Way
Raleigh, NC 27695
Primary Email:
Secondary Email:
