Planar auxetic structures have the potential to impact on a wide range of applications from deployable and morphing structures to space-filling composite and medical treatments. The ability to fabricate auxetics from smart materials greatly enhances this facility by building in controllable actuation and deployment. A smart auxetic device can be compressed and fixed into a storage state. When deployment is required the device can be appropriately stimulated and the stored elastic energy is released, resulting in a marked structural expansion. Instead of using a conventional external actuator to drive deployment the material is made to undergo phase transition where one stimulus (e.g. heat) initiates a mechanical response. Here we show how smart material auxetics can be realized using a thermally responsive shape memory polymer composites. We show how a shape memory polymer auxetic hexachiral structure can be tailored to provide a tunable stiffness response in its fully deployed state by varying the angle of inter-hub connections, and yet is still able to undergo thermally stimulated deployment.

We present a new approach to the fabrication of soft dielectric elastomer actuators using a 3D printing process. Complete actuators including active membranes and support structures can be 3D printed in one go, resulting in a great improvement in fabrication speed and increases in accuracy and consistency. We describe the fabrication process and present force and displacement results for a double-membrane antagonistic actuator. In this structure controlled prestrain is applied by the simple process of pressing together two printed actuator halves. The development of 3D printable soft actuators will have a large impact on many application areas including engineering, medicine and the emerging field of soft robotics.

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. (2016) Hybrid auxetic foam and perforated plate composites for human body support. physica status solidi (b), 253 (7). pp. 1378 -1386 . ISSN 0370-1972 Disclaimer UWE has obtained warranties from all depositors as to their title in the material deposited and as to their right to deposit such material. UWE makes no representation or warranties of commercial utility, title, or fitness for a particular purpose or any other warranty, express or implied in respect of any material deposited.UWE makes no representation that the use of the materials will not infringe any patent, copyright, trademark or other property or proprietary rights. UWE accepts no liability for any infringement of intellectual property rights in any material deposited but will remove such material from public view pending investigation in the event of an allegation of any such infringement.

The analysed data from both the survey and the focus groups justify the chosen concept of an anthropomorphic MIS robotic system which imitates the natural motion of the hands.