Design and fabrication of a three-dimensional meso-sized robotic metamaterial with actively controlled properties

Metamaterials can achieve naturally unobtainable properties according to how their microarchitectures are engineered. By incorporating robot-inspired actuators, sensors, and microprocessors within their microarchitectures, still more extreme properties and diverse combinations of properties can be a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Materials horizons 2020-01, Vol.7 (1), p.229-235
Main Authors: Luo, Chenyang, Song, Yuanping, Zhao, Chang, Thirumalai, Sridharan, Ladner, Ian, Cullinan, Michael A, Hopkins, Jonathan B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actuators
Computer architecture
Design optimization
Metamaterials
Microprocessors
Parameters
Properties (attributes)
Robotics
Robots
Stiffness
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Summary:Metamaterials can achieve naturally unobtainable properties according to how their microarchitectures are engineered. By incorporating robot-inspired actuators, sensors, and microprocessors within their microarchitectures, still more extreme properties and diverse combinations of properties can be achieved; and their properties can be actively tuned in real time according to uploaded control instructions. Despite the enormous potential of such robotic metamaterials, no three-dimensional designs have been demonstrated because such designs are difficult to make using existing fabrication approaches. Making them with constituent cells small enough to be considered a material instead of a collection of macro-sized robots is even more difficult. Here we demonstrate the first fabricated three-dimensional robotic metamaterial that achieves actively controlled properties. It's cells are meso-sized (5 mm), which make them the smallest robots to date among those intended to work together within a lattice for achieving any objective. We optimize the design's geometry and demonstrate its ability to tune its stiffness as desired using closed-loop control. We introduce and fabricate a metamaterial that consists of 5 mm-sized 3D cells that each possess actuators, sensors, and circuitry to enable desired mechanical properties that emerge from closed-loop swarm control according to uploaded instructions.
ISSN:2051-6347
2051-6355
DOI:10.1039/c9mh01368g