Related papers: Muscle-inspired flexible mechanical logic architec…
Natural organisms utilize distributed actuation through their musculoskeletal systems to adapt their gait for traversing diverse terrains or to morph their bodies for varied tasks. A longstanding challenge in robotics is to emulate this…
Recent advances in metamaterials and fabrication techniques have revived interest in mechanical computing. Contrary to techniques relying on static deformations of buckling beams or origami-based lattices, the integration of wave scattering…
The structural complexity of metamaterials is limitless, although in practice, most designs comprise periodic architectures which lead to materials with spatially homogeneous features. More advanced tasks, arising in e.g. soft robotics,…
Manipulating the way in which colloidal particles self-organise is a central challenge in the design of functional soft materials. Meeting this challenge requires the use of building blocks that interact with one another in a highly…
Natural systems integrate the work of many sub-units (cells) toward a large-scale unified goal (morphological and behavioral), which can counteract the effects of unexpected experiences, damage, or simply changes in tasks demands. In this…
Animals can accomplish many incredible behavioral feats across a wide range of operational environments and scales that current robots struggle to match. One explanation for this performance gap is the extraordinary properties of the…
Rigid-bodied robots often lack compliance needed to adapt to unstructured environments, while fully soft robots, though highly adaptable, struggle with scalability and load capacity. In nature, musculoskeletal systems balance strength and…
We introduce a numerical scheme to evolve functional materials that can accomplish a specified mechanical task. In this scheme, the number of solutions, their spatial architectures and the correlations among them can be computed. As an…
The ability to deal with articulated objects is very important for robots assisting humans. In this work, a framework to robustly and adaptively operate common doors, using an autonomous mobile manipulator, is proposed. To push forward the…
Magnetic-responsive composites that consist of soft matrix embedded with hard-magnetic particles have recently been demonstrated as robust soft active materials for fast-transforming actuation. However, the deformation of the functional…
The design of intelligent materials often draws parallels with the complex adaptive behaviors of biological organisms, where robust functionality stems from sophisticated hierarchical organization and emergent long-distance coordination…
Reprogrammable mechanical metamaterials, composed of a lattice of discretely adaptive elements, are emerging as a promising platform for mechanical intelligence. To operate in unknown environments, such structures must go beyond passive…
Landauer's principle places a fundamental lower limit on the work required to perform a logically irreversible operation. Logically reversible gates provide a way to avoid these work costs, and also simplify the task of making the…
Flexibility governs the many properties of materials and is crucial for the function of proteins and biopolymers. However, how the self-assembly of flexibly bonded particles can lead to larger structures with global reconfigurability is…
The human arm exhibits remarkable capabilities, including both explosive power and precision, which demonstrate dexterity, compliance, and robustness in unstructured environments. Developing robotic systems that emulate human-like…
Inspired by the necessity of morphological adaptation in animals, a growing body of work has attempted to expand robot training to encompass physical aspects of a robot's design. However, reinforcement learning methods capable of optimizing…
Cooperative collective dynamics is a principal determinant of the ability of synthetic micromotors to perform specific functions. However, realizing controllable and predictable collective behavior in complex physiological environments…
Synthetic active colloidal systems are being studied extensively because of the diverse and often unusual phenomena these nonequilibrium systems manifest, and their potential applications in fields ranging from biology to material science.…
We posit that embodied artificial intelligence is not only a computational, but also a materials problem. While the importance of material and structural properties in the control loop are well understood, materials can take an active role…
Construction throughout history typically assumes that its blueprints and building blocks are pre-determined. However, recent work suggests that alternative approaches can enable new paradigms for structure formation. Aleatory…