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Intelligent Soft Material Curls Under Pressure

Plants and animals can rapidly respond to changes in their environment, like a Venus flytrap snapping shut when a fly touches it. Ideally, soft robots would mimic the intelligent and autonomous behaviors seen in nature, combining sensing and controlled movement. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces  have printed liquid metal circuits onto a single piece of soft polymer, creating an intelligent material that curls under mechanical pressure or stretching. They created soft actuators with embodied sensing, actuation, and control at the single-unit level, which they achieved by synergistically harnessing the mechanosensing and electrothermal properties of liquid metal to actuate the thermally responsive liquid crystal elastomer.

Topics:
Automation Materials Motion Control Robotics Sensors

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    Transcript

    00:00:02 [Music] plants and animals can quickly respond to changes in their environment think of a venus flytrap snapping shut when a fly touches it ideally soft robots built with flexible materials would mimic the intelligent and autonomous behavior seen in nature combining sensing and controlled movement

    00:00:23 however replicating these actions in robots usually requires complex clunky mechanics a simpler design is needed where a single component can both sense a change in the environment and then react now researchers reporting in acs applied materials and interfaces have created an intelligent material that

    00:00:39 curls under mechanical pressure and expands when stretched to make a soft material capable of autonomous movement chao zhao hong liu and colleagues printed liquid metal into circuits on polymers that undergo large changes to their shapes when heated or cooled these scientists had previously explored

    00:00:57 using liquid metals to create thin flexible circuits these circuits quickly heat up when an electric current is generated either from an electrical source or from pressure applied to the circuit when the soft circuits are stretched the current drops cooling the material the researchers applied a nickel-infused liquid metal onto a soft polymer film

    00:01:17 and magnetically moved the liquid into lines to form an uninterrupted circuit a silicone sealant coated the circuit in response to a current the soft material curled and changed from light pink to dark red as the temperature increased the team used the material to develop autonomous grippers that sensed and responded to pressure they could pick up a small round object

    00:01:38 and then drop it when the pressure was reduced another autonomous gripper transported a blueberry when the material was repeatedly stretched and released the researchers say that these pressure and stretch sensitive materials could be adapted for use in soft robots performing complex tasks or locomotion [Music]

    00:02:13 you