Could reconfigurable metastructures be the holy grail of physical intelligence?
A compliant metastructure design with reconfigurability up to six degrees of freedom
Nature Communications volume 16, Article number: 719 (2025)
Humphrey Yang, Dinesh K. Patel, Tate Johnson, Ke Zhong, Gina Olson, Carmel Majidi, Mohammad F. Islam, Teng Zhang* & Lining Yao*
Freely access the paper online | PDF
News: CMU news
Collaborative Institutes:
Morphing Matter Lab, Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley
Carnegie Mellon University
Syracuse University
A Compliant Metastructure Design
We have developed an algorithm to design metastructures that are reconfigurable across six degrees of freedom and allow for stiffness tunability. The algorithm can interpret the kinematic motions that are needed for multiple configurations of a device and assist designers in creating such reconfigurability. This advancement gives designers more precise control over the functionality of joints for various applications.
We demonstrated the structure’s versatile capabilities via multiple wearable devices tailored for unique movement functions, body areas, and uses.
“In the case of carpal tunnel syndrome, a typical wrist brace prevents patients from exercising their joints at all times to avoid injury and promote healing. But oftentimes during rehab, patients still need to momentarily move their joints to carry out chores that were typically effortless to do. Because our structures can reconfigure to selectively lock and unlock motions, it can restrict motions to fulfill the function of a brace for the majority of the time, but selectively allow the patient to move their joint in intended ways for short periods of time. This allows patients to engage in daily activities without having to frequently take on or off the brace,” said Humphrey Yang, the leading author of the paper.
Resistive heating wires added to the 3D-printed metastructure enable the structures to reconfigure their motional degrees of freedom during use.
Roboticists could benefit from the structure’s ability to reconfigure joint mobility because a robot designed for multiple purposes could need varying mobilities. The ability to design joints with programmable and arbitrary reconfigurability could be a “holy grail” in creating versatile robots.
Additionally, the device’s ability to reconfigure and provide various stiffnesses enables it to mimic the sensation of touching materials ranging from soft gel to metal surfaces. This could advance augmented reality for rehab and medical training.
It shows how mechanisms can further augment material intelligence to achieve our ultimate vision of physically-embodied intelligent matter and machines
Funding
The authors acknowledge funding support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, including IIS-CAREER-2047912 (L.Y.), IIS-CAREER-2427455 (L.Y.), IIS-2118924 (L.Y.), and CMMI-2020476 (T.Z.), and the Translational Fellowship award from the Center for Machine Learning and Health at Carnegie Mellon University.
Credit
Project Execution:
This research was conducted in the Morphing Matter Lab, directed by Lining Yao at the University of California, Berkeley, Soft Machines Lab at CMU’s Mechanical Engineering Department, and Syracuse University.