Progammable Materials sense Their Location

Quite interesting

Programmable Materials Can Sense Their Own Movements and Interactions

MIT News, Adam Zewe, August 10, 2022

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists have created three-dimensionally (3D)-printed materials with programmable mechanical properties that can sense their movements and interaction with the environment. The researchers incorporated networks of air-filled channels into 3D-printed lattices; measuring pressure changes within these channels when the structure is squeezed, bent, or stretched gives engineers feedback on how the material is moving. Said MIT's Lillian Chin, "The idea with this work is that we can take any material that can be 3D-printed and have a simple way to route channels throughout it so we can get sensorization with structure." The researchers 3D-printed a handed shearing auxetics robot, ran it through a sequence of movements, and trained a neural network on the sensor data to accurately predict its motion.