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About

Bingxing Chen is a leading researcher at the intersection of bio-inspired robotics, tensegrity structures, and soft robotics. His work centers on harnessing the unique mechanical properties of tensegrity—structures that maintain stability through a balance of tension and compression—to create robots with unprecedented adaptability and performance. Chen’s most impactful contribution is the development of the tensegrity robotic fish (TenFiBot), detailed in his highly cited 2019 paper (135 citations), which demonstrated how a segmented body linked by tension elements can achieve lifelike swimming. He further advanced this concept by showing how body stiffness can be tuned online using antagonistic stiffness in singular configurations (89 citations), enabling the fish to adjust its swimming mode in real-time. Beyond aquatic robots, Chen has pioneered tensegrity joints that mimic biological motion with minimal axis drift, and has applied these principles to create bistable soft grippers for UAVs (18 citations) and adaptive feet for quadruped robots navigating unstructured terrains. His comprehensive 2024 review on 3D printing for soft robots (35 citations) has become a key resource for the field. With over 350 total citations and a string of recent high-impact publications in 2024-2025, Chen is pushing the boundaries of what tensegrity robots can achieve, from high-speed terrestrial locomotion to delicate aerial grasping.