Materials
Fabrication of loosely cross-linked LCE film
Fabrication of heating mesh
Preparation of soft gripper
Preparation of untethered robot
Characterization of LCE artificial muscle/LCE tubular actuator
We showed the fabrication process of the LCE tubular actuator in fig. S2. First, we sandwiched three heating wires between two layers of loosely cross-linked LCE film (39 mm × 30 mm × 1 mm). Then, the whole structure was compressed, forming a sandwich-like structure. In step (iii), we rolled the sandwich-like structure to a tube and stretched it along the longitudinal direction by λp = 1.8 to align the liquid crystal mesogens. Next, we obtained the LCE tubular actuator by exposing under UV irradiation for 30 min, as shown in step (iv). Last, we soldered the electrical wires to the heating wires.