Award Ceremony for the Best Bionic System Award (Image by SIA)

Certificate of Award (Image by SIA)

The 2025 IEEE Conference on Bionic and Syncretic Systems (IEEE CBS 2025) was recently held in Beijing. A paper titled A Leaping Spider-Inspired Soft Bionic Actuator for Amphibious Movement Robots from Shenyang Institute of Automation (SIA), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) won the Best Bionic System Award.

The paper is authored by Yiwei Zhang, a Ph.D. candidate from the Micro-Nano Robotics research group in the Robotics Laboratory of SIA, and his colleagues. Inspired by leaping spiders, the research team proposed a novel soft actuator design method based on an electrostatic-hydraulic coupling principle. This approach combines the high-speed response of electrical actuation with the large deformation and high output force of hydraulic actuation. It enables rapid and flexible movements in soft robots, including crawling, jumping, swimming, and amphibious locomotion. The conference presentation attracted significant attention and sparked lively discussions among attendees.

IEEE CBS 2025 was co-initiated by Professor Toshio Fukuda, Foreign Academician of CAS, Professor Alois Knoll from the Technical University of Munich, and other distinguished scholars. The conference program featured plenary sessions, invited talks, and oral presentations, bringing together the latest international advancements in robotics, automation, biomechatronics, and bionic systems.