Related papers: Programming evolution of geometry in shape-morphin…
Lack of stiffness often limits thin shape-shifting structures to small scales. The large in-plane transformations required to distort the metrics are indeed commonly achieved by using soft hydrogels or elastomers. We introduce here a…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) can undergo large reversible contractions along their nematic director upon heating or illumination. A spatially patterned director within a flat LCE sheet thus encodes a pattern of contraction on heating,…
Conventional soft pneumatic actuators, typically based on hollow elastomeric chambers, often suffer from small structural support and require costly geometry-specific redesigns for multimodal functionality. Porous materials such as foam,…
Shape-morphing soft materials can enable diverse target morphologies through voxel-level material distribution design, offering significant potential for various applications. Despite progress in basic shape-morphing design with simple…
Liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs) are shape-changing materials that exhibit large deformations in response to applied stimuli. Local control of the orientation of LCEs spatially directs the deformation of these materials to realize…
Shape-morphing metamaterials enable adaptive structures capable of complex functional deformations, with applications ranging from reconfigurable structures and soft robotics to medical devices. However, their design remains challenging due…
A flat sheet programmed with a planar pattern of spontaneous shape change will morph into a curved surface. Such metric mechanics is seen in growing biological sheets, and may be engineered in actuating soft matter sheets such as…
We present a framework for shape matching in computational anatomy allowing users control of the degree to which the matching is diffeomorphic. This control is given as a function defined over the image and parameterises the template…
Liquid crystal elastomers contract along their director on heating and recover on cooling, offering great potential as actuators and artificial muscles. If a flat sheet is programmed with a spatially varying director pattern, it will…
Soft robots achieve functionality through tight coupling among geometry, material composition, and actuation. As a result, effective design optimization requires these three aspects to be considered jointly rather than in isolation. This…
Designing flat sheets that can be made to deform into 3D shapes is an area of intense research with applications in micromachines, soft robotics, and medical implants. Thus far, such sheets were designed to adopt a single target shape.…
Cellular structures must organize themselves within strict physical constraints, operating with finite resources and well-defined boundaries. Classical systems demonstrate only passive responses to boundaries, from surface energy…
We investigate how thin structures change their shape in response to non-mechanical stimuli that can be interpreted as variations in the structure's natural curvature. Starting from the theory of non-Euclidean plates and shells, we derive…
Accurate modelling of object deformations is crucial for a wide range of robotic manipulation tasks, where interacting with soft or deformable objects is essential. Current methods struggle to generalise to unseen forces or adapt to new…
Dynamic shape-morphing soft materials systems are ubiquitous in living organisms; they are also of rapidly increasing relevance to emerging technologies in soft machines, flexible electronics, and smart medicines. Soft matter equipped with…
Living biological tissue is a complex system, constantly growing and changing in response to external and internal stimuli. These processes lead to remarkable and intricate changes in shape. Modeling and understanding both natural and…
Active materials take advantage of their internal sources of energy to self-organize in an automated manner. This feature provides a novel opportunity to design micron-scale machines with minimal required control. However, self-organization…
The concept of programmable matter envisions a very large number of tiny and simple robot particles forming a smart material. Even though the particles are restricted to local communication, local movement, and simple computation, their…
Developable surfaces are commonly observed in various applications such as architecture, product design, manufacturing, mechanical materials, and data physicalization as well as in the development of tangible interaction and deformable…
The emissivity of common materials remains constant with temperature variations, and cannot drastically change. However, it is possible to design its entire behaviour as a function of temperature, and to significantly modify the thermal…