The Third Online Academic Forum on "Frontiers in Bionic Engineering" organized by the Youth Commission of the ISBE was successfully held via tencent meeting/voov meeting on May 12, 2021. The forum was presided over by Dr. Hamed Rajabi from the Kiel University of Germany. As one of the winners of the National Science Foundation for Outstanding Young Scholars, Prof. Tiefeng Li from Zhejiang University was invited to share the latest research progress of his team in the field of deep-sea bionic soft robots.

As we all know, the deep sea has not been effectively explored so far due to the limitations of extreme conditions such as high pressure and low temperature. Inspired by deep-sea creatures, Prof. Li Tiefeng and his team took the lead in putting forward the pressure adaptation principle of soft-hard cohesion in mechatronic systems, and successfully developed a bionic soft intelligent robot without pressure-resistant shell. It is the first time to realize the autonomous swimming of a self-powered soft robot in the Mariana Trench down to a depth of 10,900 meters. This environment adaptive bionic soft robot and intelligent system provides a new solution for deep-sea exploration, environmental monitoring and resource exploration, and provides a new idea for robot and intelligent system design in complex environment and tasks.

More than 160 scholars and postgraduates from more than 50 universities and research institutions around the world participated in the forum online, mainly including the University of Salford at UK, Queen Mary University of London at UK, Kiel University of Germany, University of Mpumalanga at South Africa, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Jilin University, Zhejiang University, Tsinghua University, Beihang University, Dalian University of Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Shandong University, South China University of Technology, etc. The forum aroused heated discussions among the participants involved. 

"Frontiers in Bionic Engineering" online academic forum is a series of academic exchange activities initiated by the Youth Commission of the ISBE. The current forum had demonstrated the latest research highlights and progress of deep-sea bionic soft robots. The activity gained attention and support of specialists, scholars and graduate students, and received enthusiastic responses.