Frequent push puppet toys within the shapes of animals and well-liked figures can transfer or collapse with the push of a button on the backside of the toys’ base. Now, a crew of UCLA engineers has created a brand new class of tunable dynamic materials that mimics the interior workings of push puppets, with functions for gentle robotics, reconfigurable architectures and area engineering.
Inside a push puppet, there are connecting cords that, when pulled taught, will make the toy stand stiff. However by loosening these cords, the “limbs” of the toy will go limp. Utilizing the identical wire tension-based precept that controls a puppet, researchers have developed a brand new kind of metamaterial, a cloth engineered to own properties with promising superior capabilities.
Printed in Supplies Horizons, the UCLA examine demonstrates the brand new light-weight metamaterial, which is outfitted with both motor-driven or self-actuating cords which can be threaded by way of interlocking cone-tipped beads. When activated, the cords are pulled tight, inflicting the nesting chain of bead particles to jam and straighten right into a line, making the fabric flip stiff whereas sustaining its total construction.
The examine additionally unveiled the fabric’s versatile qualities that might result in its eventual incorporation into gentle robotics or different reconfigurable constructions:
- The extent of stress within the cords can “tune” the ensuing construction’s stiffness — a completely taut state presents the strongest and stiffest degree, however incremental adjustments within the cords’ stress permit the construction to flex whereas nonetheless providing energy. The secret’s the precision geometry of the nesting cones and the friction between them.
- Constructions that use the design can collapse and stiffen over and over, making them helpful for long-lasting designs that require repeated actions. The fabric additionally presents simpler transportation and storage when in its undeployed, limp state.
- After deployment, the fabric reveals pronounced tunability, changing into greater than 35 occasions stiffer and altering its damping functionality by 50%.
- The metamaterial may very well be designed to self-actuate, by way of synthetic tendons that set off the form with out human management
“Our metamaterial allows new capabilities, displaying nice potential for its incorporation into robotics, reconfigurable constructions and area engineering,” stated corresponding creator and UCLA Samueli Faculty of Engineering postdoctoral scholar Wenzhong Yan. “Constructed with this materials, a self-deployable gentle robotic, for instance, might calibrate its limbs’ stiffness to accommodate totally different terrains for optimum motion whereas retaining its physique construction. The sturdy metamaterial might additionally assist a robotic raise, push or pull objects.”
“The final idea of contracting-cord metamaterials opens up intriguing prospects on how you can construct mechanical intelligence into robots and different units,” Yan stated.
A 12-second video of the metamaterial in motion is on the market right here, by way of the UCLA Samueli YouTube Channel.
Senior authors on the paper are Ankur Mehta, a UCLA Samueli affiliate professor {of electrical} and pc engineering and director of the Laboratory for Embedded Machines and Ubiquitous Robots of which Yan is a member, and Jonathan Hopkins, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering who leads UCLA’s Versatile Analysis Group.
In keeping with the researchers, potential functions of the fabric additionally embrace self-assembling shelters with shells that encapsulate a collapsible scaffolding. It might additionally function a compact shock absorber with programmable dampening capabilities for autos shifting by way of tough environments.
“Wanting forward, there is a huge area to discover in tailoring and customizing capabilities by altering the dimensions and form of the beads, in addition to how they’re linked,” stated Mehta, who additionally has a UCLA school appointment in mechanical and aerospace engineering.
Whereas earlier analysis has explored contracting cords, this paper has delved into the mechanical properties of such a system, together with the perfect shapes for bead alignment, self-assembly and the power to be tuned to carry their total framework.
Different authors of the paper are UCLA mechanical engineering graduate college students Talmage Jones and Ryan Lee — each members of Hopkins’ lab, and Christopher Jawetz, a Georgia Institute of Know-how graduate scholar who participated within the analysis as a member of Hopkins’ lab whereas he was an undergraduate aerospace engineering scholar at UCLA.
The analysis was funded by the Workplace of Naval Analysis and the Protection Superior Analysis Initiatives Company, with further help from the Air Power Workplace of Scientific Analysis, in addition to computing and storage providers from the UCLA Workplace of Superior Analysis Computing.
