Novel Material Able to Sense, Think, and Act

Researchers at Penn State have created a new material that is capable of behaving like a brain. See how this soft polymer is able to process sensing, thinking, and acting abilities without needing extra help.

“We have created the first example of an engineering material that can simultaneously sense, think and act upon mechanical stress without requiring additional circuits to process such signals,” said principal investigator Ryan Harne  . “The soft polymer material acts like a brain that can receive digital strings of information that are then processed, resulting in new sequences of digital information that can control reactions.”

Transcript

00:00:01 This research has been in collaboration with our colleagues at the U.S. Air Force Research Lab. We've created a material made out of rubber polymers that can compute any binary string of information to a new output string of digital information. What we've shown is materials that can feel tactile loads, forces and then react to them. So we've created a sense of touch. but our foundation is significant because researchers could also use our tools and create senses of hearing and senses of sight in engineered materials. What we have shown here is we've shown a mechanical platform for computing.

00:00:39 Our information is still electrical just like a normal computer but what is actually changing in the system to control the information is mechanical. We now know that we are very close to the tipping point when engineered materials have a genuine form of intelligence. That they can think, they can react autonomously as they navigate the environment.