Reprogrammable Surfaces Through Star Graph Metamaterials

TL;DR

This paper introduces reprogrammable surfaces using star-graph structured auxetic metamaterials, enabling dynamic shape shifting and information display without continuous input, with broad applications in robotics and manufacturing.

Contribution

It reveals a new class of scale-independent auxetic metamaterials with star-graph trajectories that allow local shape reprogramming and complex shape transformations.

Findings

Exponential growth in possible shapes with material size.

Active guidance enables shape reprogramming without continuous input.

Potential applications in micro devices and tactile displays.

Abstract

The ability to change a surface's profile allows biological systems to effectively manipulate and blend into their surroundings. Current surface morphing techniques rely either on having a small number of fixed states or on directly driving the entire system. We discovered a subset of scale-independent auxetic metamaterials have a state trajectory with a star-graph structure. At the central node, small nudges can move the material between trajectories, allowing us to locally shift Poisson's ratio, causing the material to take on different shapes under loading. While the number of possible shapes grows exponentially with the size of the material, the probability of finding one at random is vanishingly small. By actively guiding the material through the node points, we produce a reprogrammable surface that does not require inputs to maintain shape and can display arbitrary 2D information and take on complex 3D shapes. Our work opens new opportunities in micro devices, tactile displays, manufacturing, and robotic systems.