The material is composed of a structural system made up of tunable beams that can alter its shape and behaviours in response to dynamic conditions. The research findings – which posit future applications in the construction of buildings, airplanes and imaging technologies, among other areas – have been published in the journal Science Robotics.
When the material is placed in aircraft wings, for example, it could learn to morph the shape of the wings based on the wind patterns during a flight to achieve greater efficiency and manoeuvrability of the plane. Building structures infused with this material could also self-adjust the rigidity in certain areas to improve their overall stability during an earthquake or other natural or manmade disasters.
Using and adapting concepts from existing artificial neural networks (ANNs) – the algorithms that drive machine learning – the researchers developed the mechanical equivalents of ANN components in an interconnected...