Unlike conventional rigid machines, soft robots generally have unique operation styles that rely heavily on matter engineering and smart material systems. Owing to the superior merits of both metals fluids, liquid metal materials are increasingly being innovatively used as actuators sensors construct robots. To promote further development prosperity in this field, review organizes summarizes ty...

Smart matter consists of sensors, actuators and computers embedded in materials to give precise and flexible control over their physical properties. We describe how globM constraints and local agents can be combined to control the overall behaviors of smart matter in a simple, robust manner. We present several examples of such systems.

Photonic sensors, signal processors and communication technologies have emerged as viable alternatives to electronics. Fiber optic sensors which can readily be integrated with smart materials and structures offer an immense potential in the realization of intelligent systems. This paper presents an overview of different types of fiber optic sensors and their application to smart structures.

Introduction Stimuli-responsive gels undergo abrupt changes in volume in response to environmental changes such as pH and temperature. Stimuli-responsive gels have attracted considerable attention as smart materials in the biochemical and biomedical fields, since they can sense environmental changes and induce structural changes by themselves. The fascinating properties of such stimuli-responsi...

Advanced materials with surfaces that have controllable oil wettability when submerged in aqueous media have great potential for various underwater applications. Here we have developed smart surfaces on commonly used materials, including non-woven textiles and polyurethane sponges, which are able to switch between superoleophilicity and superoleophobicity in aqueous media. The smart surfaces ar...

Additive manufacturing (AM) has drawn tremendous attention in various fields. In recent years, great efforts have been made to develop novel additive manufacturing processes such as micro-/nano-scale 3D printing, bioprinting, and 4D printing for the fabrication of complex 3D structures with high resolution, living components, and multimaterials. The development of advanced functional materials ...

We report results on the design and implementation of a low cost wireless multi-sensor system to enable the creation of smart building materials such as smart bricks. We have demonstrated a proof-of-concept device that samples both digital and analog sensor data from a number of configurable sensors, processes the data, and wirelessly transmits it to a data collection receiver with a maximum ra...