Related papers: Scalable 3D printing for topological mechanical me…
Soft robotic grasping has rapidly spread through the academic robotics community in recent years and pushed into industrial applications. At the same time, multimaterial 3D printing has become widely available, enabling the monolithic…
Structures with artificial mechanical properties, often called mechanical metamaterials, exhibit divergent yet tunable performance. Various types of mechanical metamaterials have been proposed, which harness light or magnetic interactions,…
Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a promising solution for handling the complexity of fabricating soft robots. However, the AM of hyperelastic materials is still challenging with a limited material range. Within this work, pellet-based 3D…
Mechanical metamaterials are those structures designed to convey force and motion in novel and desirable ways. Recently, Kane and Lubensky showed that lattices at the point of marginal mechanical stability (Maxwell lattices) possess a…
Concepts from quantum topological states of matter have been extensively utilized in the past decade in creating mechanical metamaterials with topologically protected features, such as one-way edge states and topologically polarized…
This paper describes a 2D and 3D simulation engine that quantitatively models the statics, dynamics, and non-linear deformation of heterogeneous soft bodies in a computationally efficient manner. There is a large body of work simulating…
Vertebrate animals benefit from a combination of rigidity for structural support and softness for adaptation. Similarly, integrating rigidity and softness can enhance the versatility of soft robotics. However, the challenges associated with…
Multi-stable mechanical structures find cutting-edge applications across various domains due to their reconfigurability, which offers innovative possibilities for engineering and technology advancements. This study explores the emergence of…
The ability to design and fabricate materials with tailored mechanical properties, combined with immunity to damage, is a frontier of materials engineering. For example, materials which are characterized by elastic properties that depend on…
Mechanical metamaterials present a promising platform for seemingly impossible mechanics. They often require incompatibility of their elementary building blocks, yet a comprehensive understanding of its role remains elusive. Relying on an…
Materials that are lightweight yet exhibit superior mechanical properties are of compelling importance for several technological applications that range from aircrafts to household appliances. Lightweight materials allow energy saving and…
The complex behavior of highly deformable mechanical metamaterials can substantially enhance the performance of soft robots.
Metasurfaces advanced the field of optics by reducing the thickness of optical components and merging multiple functionalities into a single layer device. However, this generally comes with a reduction in performance, especially for…
Emerging multi-material 3D printing techniques have paved the way for the rational design of metamaterials with not only complex geometries but also arbitrary distributions of multiple materials within those geometries. Varying the spatial…
Variable stiffness is a key capability in biological and robotic systems, enabling adaptive interaction across tasks and environments. Mechanical metamaterials offer an alternative to conventional mechatronic solutions by encoding stiffness…
Mechanical metamaterials leverage geometric design to achieve unconventional properties, such as high strength at low density, efficient wave guiding, and complex shape morphing. The ability to control shape changes builds on the complex…
Rapid advances in additive manufacturing over the past decade have kindled widespread interest in the rational design of metamaterials with unique properties. However, many applications require multi-physics metamaterials, where multiple…
Defects, and in particular topological defects, are architectural motifs that play a crucial role in natural materials. Here we provide a systematic strategy to introduce such defects in mechanical metamaterials. We first present…
Active colloidal particles provide versatile model systems for exploring non-equilibrium physics in motile matter. To date, most experimental realizations have focused on spherical particles, largely due to fabrication constraints. However,…
Nature provides examples of self-assemble lightweight disordered network structures with remarkable mechanical properties which are desirable for many applications purposes but challenging to reproduce artificially. Previous experimental…