Fig. 1. Inspiration, concept, and realization of bioinspired soft robotic actuators and microdevices. (a) The hierarchical sarcomere architecture within myofibrils is a great example from nature motivating the bottom up assembly of microactuators for powering larger scale machines. (b) We utilized the superior efficiency of gold plasmonic nanotransducers by either directly linking nanoactuators together using colloidal self-assembly or embedding them into soft biopolymers. (c) A variety of soft robotic microdevices are constructed by physically attaching microactuators to hydrogel mechanisms that are directly photopolymerized around the actuators without additional assembly procedures.