本项目研究光热响应液晶凝胶及其软机器人设计。软机器人的柔性大大提升其相比传统硬机器人的应用价值，而光、热驱动软机器人可能无需机械接触，具有远程、瞬时、局部控制等优越性。光热响应液晶常被设计出来以实现智能软机器人的多功能响应。然而由各种方式制备的液晶聚合物材料在各种物理场作用下仍受力学响应时间、有限的响应量和模式、有限的变形控制、对光特定波长敏感等因素的限制。本项目提出两种方案以提升液晶聚合物的力学响应效率。其一，将液晶与凝胶融合，利用液晶在凝胶中的溶胀大大提升力学响应量；其二，加入吸光颗粒提升光、热能吸收率。因此本项目将液晶凝胶作为对象提出一种力学本构理论，并研究含吸光颗粒的液晶凝胶的光辐射传热及其力学响应，从而将这些理论研究付诸计算机模拟以辅助设计光热响应液晶凝胶软机器人。光热驱动软机器人有望应用于光热马达，智能表面清洁剂，3D/4D打印，形状记忆材料，智能生产传送带，微创医疗机器人等。

This project studies the design of a photothermally responsive liquid crystal gel and its soft robot. The flexibility of soft robots greatly enhances its application value compared to traditional hard robots, in that optically and thermally driven soft robots may not require mechanical contact, and have the advantages of remote, instantaneous and local control. The photothermally responsive liquid crystal is often designed to realize multifunctional response of intelligent soft robots. However, liquid crystal polymer materials prepared by various methods are still limited by factors such as mechanical response time, limited amount of responses and modes, limited deformation control, and sensitivity to specific wavelengths of light under various physical fields etc. This project proposes two schemes to improve the mechanical response efficiency of liquid crystal polymers. First, if liquid crystal and gel are fused, the swelling of liquid crystal in the gel greatly enlarges mechanical response; second, the addition of light-absorbing particles increases the absorption rate of light and heat energy. Therefore, this project proposes a constitutive theory of liquid crystal gels, and studies the light radiative heat transfer and mechanical response of liquid crystal gels containing light-absorbing particles, so as to put these theoretical studies into computer simulation to assist in the design of light and heat responsive liquid crystal gel soft robots. Photothermally driven soft robots are expected to be used in photothermal motors, intelligent surface cleaners, 3D/4D printing, shape memory materials, intelligent production conveyor belts, and minimally invasive medical robots etc.