A team of researchers led by Dr. Yuanyuan Guo at Tohoku University’s Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences (FRIS) has developed a flexible polymer-based actuatable fiber that can be integrated with smart materials and biosensing composite materials. The fiber, produced using the preform-to-fiber thermal drawing process, can be used for closed-loop control in high-precision operations, making it useful in the fields of soft and flexible robotics, prosthetic limbs, and minimally invasive surgical tools. The fiber was created by embedding shape-memory alloy (SMA) wires, which enable high mechanical actuation, and integrating the fiber with carbon-based composite materials for biochemical sensing. The team was able to use the fiber to approach branched vessels and capture localized chemical information for diagnostic purposes. The researchers hope to improve the fiber’s freedom of movement in the future.