Vision Statement: Interactive Materials–Drivers of Future Robotic Systems

A robot senses its environment, processes the sensory information, acts in response to these inputs, and possibly communicates with the outside world. Robots generally achieve these tasks with electronics-based hardware or by receiving inputs from some external hardware. In contrast, simple microorganisms can autonomously perceive, act, and communicate via purely physicochemical processes in soft material systems. A key property of biological systems is that they are built from energy-consuming ‘active’ units. Exciting developments in material science show that even very simple artificial active building blocks can show surprisingly rich emergent behaviors. Active non-equilibrium systems are therefore predicted to play an essential role to realize interactive materials. A major challenge is to find robust ways to couple and integrate the energy-consuming building blocks to the mechanical structure of the material. However, success in this endeavor will lead to a new generation of sophisticated micro- and soft-robotic systems that can operate autonomously.
Author(s): | Fischer, P. |
Journal: | Advanced Materials |
Volume: | 32 |
Number (issue): | 20 |
Pages: | 1905953 |
Year: | 2020 |
Month: | January |
Day: | 13 |
Bibtex Type: | Article (article) |
DOI: | 10.1002/adma.201905953 |
URL: | https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201905953 |
Electronic Archiving: | grant_archive |
Note: | Invited Vision Statement |
BibTex
@article{Fischer2020, title = {Vision Statement: Interactive Materials–Drivers of Future Robotic Systems}, journal = {Advanced Materials}, abstract = {A robot senses its environment, processes the sensory information, acts in response to these inputs, and possibly communicates with the outside world. Robots generally achieve these tasks with electronics-based hardware or by receiving inputs from some external hardware. In contrast, simple microorganisms can autonomously perceive, act, and communicate via purely physicochemical processes in soft material systems. A key property of biological systems is that they are built from energy-consuming ‘active’ units. Exciting developments in material science show that even very simple artificial active building blocks can show surprisingly rich emergent behaviors. Active non-equilibrium systems are therefore predicted to play an essential role to realize interactive materials. A major challenge is to find robust ways to couple and integrate the energy-consuming building blocks to the mechanical structure of the material. However, success in this endeavor will lead to a new generation of sophisticated micro- and soft-robotic systems that can operate autonomously.}, volume = {32}, number = {20}, pages = {1905953}, month = jan, year = {2020}, note = {Invited Vision Statement}, slug = {fischer2019}, author = {Fischer, P.}, url = { https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201905953}, month_numeric = {1} }