A soft lens can refocus when light activates its artificial muscles

 Photo: Corey Zheng / Georgia Institute of Technology. A lens can change its focus when light is projected onto it. Georgia Tech researchers made this prototype from a soft, water-based hydrogel: light makes parts of the material contract, reshaping the lens and changing its focal length. The 2025 *Science Robotics* study also demonstrates control over how the lens shapes and steers light. The unusual part is that light does two jobs: it supplies energy to the soft actuator and acts as the control signal. That could simplify vision components for machines that need to bend or move through delicate spaces. But this is still a lab demonstration, not a robot camera ready to navigate on its own. The researchers’ proof-of-concept camera combines the lens with a custom light-activated microfluidic chip; putting that system into a soft robot is future work. The team describes the lens and its limits in [Georgia Tech’s research explainer](https://news.gatech.edu/news/2025/10/22/flexible-lens-controlled-light-activated-artificial-muscles-promises-let-soft). The peer-reviewed paper is [available via PubMed](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41124296/). ~science