Robots that Behave Like a Material, Why and How
MEETING FOR THE WEEK OF May 12, 2025
This Meeting at a Glance:
Program: Robots that Behave Like a Material, Why and How
Speaker: Dr Matthew Devlin
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The Forgotten Name
I'm not the easiest guy in the world to get along with. So when our anniversary rolled around, I wanted my wife to know how much I appreciated her tolerating me for the past 20 years. I ordered flowers and told the florist to enclose a card that read, 'Thanks for putting up with me so long.'
When my wife got the delivery, she called me at work.
"Just where do you think you're going?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" I said.
She read the card aloud as the florist had written it: "Thanks for putting up with me. So long."
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Why Are Some People Left Handed?
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PROGRAM: Robots that Behave Like a Material, Why and How
SPEAKER: Dr Matthew Devlin
We bring you a new program every week on innovation, entrepreneurship, and education and how they contribute to service to others.
When we look to science fiction, there are many examples of impossibly smart materials. The T-1000 from Terminator 2 comes to mind, being able to have a body that can heal and reshape at will. Or, much friendlier, the "nanobots" from Big Hero 6, a large collective of small robots that can create any shape at will.
In real life, embryonic tissue is the closest thing to these fantastical materials. It can change its shape, create complex structures, and even change its internal strength, able to melt and flow like a liquid. In a collaboration of roboticists and embryo physicists, the speaker and his co-authors made a collective of robots that embeds these principles, hopefully representing the first step toward uncovering the physics that could govern these sci-fi robotic materials.
Our speaker, Dr Matthew Devlin, is a mechanical engineer from UC Santa Barbara who has recently published a paper called "Material-like robotic collectives with spatiotemporal control of strength and shape" in the journal Science. A small team made up of robotics engineers and embryo physicists were able to distill some of the key principles of embryonic tissue and demonstrate them in robots. He believes it is a key piece of the puzzle for a Big Hero 6 or Terminator-like robotic material.
Members and guests, please welcome Dr Matt Devlin!
To learn more, go to:
this paper published in the Journal Science:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads7942
A news article written by UCSB giving a high-level explanation:
https://news.ucsb.edu/2025/021769/how-get-robot-collective-act-smart-material
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