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About

Stephen Licht is a pioneering robotics researcher whose work sits at the intersection of soft robotics, underwater systems, and autonomous vehicles. Best known for his groundbreaking contributions to marine robotics, Licht has fundamentally advanced how robotic systems interact with delicate deep-sea environments. His 2016 paper on soft robotic grippers for biological sampling on deep reefs stands as his most influential work, accumulating over 820 citations and demonstrating that compliant, biologically inspired grippers could revolutionize underwater specimen collection without damaging fragile reef organisms — a dramatic departure from the rigid, industrial-grade manipulators that had long dominated the field. Complementing this, his research on universal jamming grippers extended soft robotic grasping technology to underwater operation for the first time. Licht has also explored amphibious robotics, drawing on sea turtle biomechanics to develop efficient flapping-foil propulsion systems, and has contributed to shared human-robot control frameworks for unmanned ground vehicles. His more recent work focuses on scalable design and manufacturing pipelines for field-deployable soft actuators, broadening the practical accessibility of this technology. Across disciplines, Licht's research consistently bridges biological inspiration with real-world engineering deployment.