Roadmap for Animate Matter

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive roadmap for animate materials, emphasizing their interdisciplinary nature, potential applications, and the challenges faced in developing artificial systems that emulate living properties.

Contribution

It offers an authoritative overview of animate materials, proposing a classification framework and highlighting key challenges and opportunities for future research and development.

Findings

Highlighting the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration.

Identifying key challenges like scalability and ethical considerations.

Proposing a classification framework based on levels of animacy.

Abstract

Humanity has long sought inspiration from nature to innovate materials and devices. As science advances, nature-inspired materials are becoming part of our lives. Animate materials, characterized by their activity, adaptability, and autonomy, emulate properties of living systems. While only biological materials fully embody these principles, artificial versions are advancing rapidly, promising transformative impacts across various sectors. This roadmap presents authoritative perspectives on animate materials across different disciplines and scales, highlighting their interdisciplinary nature and potential applications in diverse fields including nanotechnology, robotics and the built environment. It underscores the need for concerted efforts to address shared challenges such as complexity management, scalability, evolvability, interdisciplinary collaboration, and ethical and environmental considerations. The framework defined by classifying materials based on their level of animacy can guide this emerging field encouraging cooperation and responsible development. By unravelling the mysteries of living matter and leveraging its principles, we can design materials and systems that will transform our world in a more sustainable manner.