Lufeng Pan

About

Lufeng Pan is a leading researcher in soft robotics and robotic exoskeletons, with work that bridges bio-inspired design and practical manipulation. His most cited paper, “Academic Review and Perspectives on Robotic Exoskeletons” (2019, 136 citations), provides a comprehensive survey of the field’s evolution since the 1960s, documenting progress in prototypes and commercialization—a foundational resource for new researchers. Pan’s core contributions center on soft actuators and grippers for unstructured grasping, as seen in his 2021 work on a pneumatic webbed soft gripper inspired by duck feet and octopus tentacles (15 citations). He has developed novel soft actuators capable of elongation, three-dimensional bending, and stiffness tuning (2018, 5 citations), and proposed a concise numerical model for bending and wrinkling in octopus-inspired soft robots (2018, 6 citations). More recently, Pan has advanced humanoid dexterous hands, designing a multi-finger synergistic adaptive hand that balances structural complexity and cost (2025, 2 citations). His work on humanoid pneumatic soft robot hands (2018, 2 citations) further demonstrates his commitment to replicating human hand functionality. With over 160 total citations, Pan’s research is shaping the next generation of compliant, adaptive robotic systems for real-world applications.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Academic Review and Perspectives on Robotic Exoskeletons

   136 citations · 2019
2. 2
   Pneumatic webbed soft gripper for unstructured grasping

   15 citations · 2021
3. 3
   Bending and Wrinkled Model Research of a Soft Robot Inspired by Octopus

   6 citations · 2018
4. 4
   A New Type of Soft Actuator: Design and Fabrication

   5 citations · 2018
5. 5
   Structural and Experimental Study of a Multi-Finger Synergistic Adaptive Humanoid Dexterous Hand

   2 citations · 2025
6. 6
   Research on Humanoid Pneumatic Soft Robot Hand

   2 citations · 2018

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links