Design and Additive Manufacturing of Robotic Metamaterials

Additive manufacturing has shown the promise of freedom of design, enabling parts customization and tailorable properties where superior structural performance can be achieved with a fraction of the weight density compared to bulk materials. However, it is difficult, currently, to combine different materials (structural, dielectric, conducting and ferroelectrics) to create a complex device with multiple functionalities that responds to multiple stimuli. Unlike biological systems where functions, including sensing, actuation, and control, are closely integrated, few materials have comparable system complexity.

In this talk, I will present a suite of new multi-material additive manufacturing processes and design methodologies to create materials with controlled and tailorable structural and functional behaviors. The structural phases consist of a network of micro-unit cells which collectively influence new mechanical behaviors (from high-strength, lightweight to toughening) not seen in their native counterparts. When combined with an electronic and functional phase, these materials turn themselves into a “robotic material” and are capable of motions with multiple degrees of freedom and amplification of strain in a prescribed direction in response to an electric field (and vice versa), and thus, programmed motions with self-sensing and feedback control.

I will present the manufacturing and synthesis of these materials, as well as their mechanics and design methods underpinning their novel behaviors.