Twisting for soft intelligent autonomous robot in unstructured environments

Abstract

Significance Autonomy is crucial for soft robotics that are constructed of soft materials. It remains challenging to create autonomous soft robots that can intelligently interact with and adapt to changing environments without external controls. To do so, it often requires an analogical soft “brain” that integrates on-board sensing, control, computation, and decision-making. Here, we report an autonomous soft robot embodied with physical intelligence for decision-making via adaptive soft body-environment interactions and snap-through instability, without integrated sensing and external controls. This study harnesses physical intelligence as a new paradigm for designing autonomous soft robots that can interact intelligently with their environments, thus potentially reducing the burdens on the conventional integrated sensing, control, computations, and decision-making systems in designing intelligent soft robots.

Reduced Membrane Model for Liquid Crystal Polymer Networks: Asymptotics and Computation

“…Origami are ancient structures made of folding thin sheets. They have recently attracted growing interest in the area of materials science for its practical value in the design of medical devices, deployable space structures and robotics [6]. In this section we explore whether our discrete model (68) with regularization is able to capture such structures.…”

“…This has been referred to as "the material is the machine" [5]. Due to this feature, engineers create soft robots using LCNs/LCEs materials, such as thermo-responsive micro-robots with autonomous locomotion in unstructured environments [6], soft materials that "swim" away from light [3], and LCN actuators that can lift an object tens of times its weight [2]. They offer abundant application prospects, for instance in the design of biomedical devices [7,8].…”

Helical perylene diimide self-assembly with a redox-active molecular switch applied to humidity sensing

“…Helical architectures constitute one of the most aesthetic and unique systems that have evolved since the origin of life on Earth. [1][2][3] The helix nanostructure, a common molecular [4][5][6][7] and supramolecular [8][9][10] motif in biological materials, has also been produced molecularly in many synthetic polymers [11][12][13] and supramolecularly through the self-assembly of many synthetic small molecules and polymers including peptides, 14 peptide amphiphiles, 15 polymer single-crystals, 16 and bolaamphiphiles. 17 Supramolecular helices can generally be produced through the intermolecular assembly of chiral molecules or the co-assembly of chiral and achiral molecules.…”

Combining Azimuthal and Polar Angle Resolved Shadow Mask Deposition and Nanosphere Lithography to Uncover Unique Nano-Crystals

“…Chiral spectroscopy and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (i.e., plasmonic methods) are being used intensively for chemical, biological, and environmental monitoring applications. Studies have focused on unique metallic nanostructures with different symmetry, inter-structural gaps, and chirality for controlling electromagnetic hotspots and varying optical properties based on the orientation of structural elements [10][11][12][13][14][15]. Moreover, magnetic memory applications, such as data storage, data transfer, and logical devices rely on the controlled propagation of spin waves through magnonic crystals via exchange interactions.…”