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Vision Statement: Interactive Materials–Drivers of Future Robotic Systems

2020

Article

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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

Department(s): Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems
Bibtex Type: Article (article)
Paper Type: Journal

DOI: 10.1002/adma.201905953
Note: Invited Vision Statement
URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201905953

BibTex

@article{Fischer2020,
  title = {Vision Statement: Interactive Materials–Drivers of Future Robotic Systems},
  author = {Fischer, P.},
  journal = {Advanced Materials},
  volume = {32},
  number = {20},
  pages = {1905953},
  month = jan,
  year = {2020},
  note = {Invited Vision Statement},
  doi = {10.1002/adma.201905953},
  url = { https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201905953},
  month_numeric = {1}
}