Blooming Knit Flowers: Loop‐Linked Soft Morphing Structures for Soft Robotics

Abstract

A loop-linked structure, which is capable of morphing in various modes, including volumetric transformation, is developed based on knitting methods. Morphing flowers (a lily-like, a daffodil-like, gamopetalous, and a calla-like flower) are fabricated using loop patterning, and their blooming motion is demonstrated by controlling a current that selectively actuates the flowers petals.

Programming soft robots with flexible mechanical metamaterials

“…(Credit: T. Balkhed, Linköping University.) (H) A morphable knitted blooming flower triggered with SMA actuators (13). (I) Chiral composite actuators made of magnetically aligned particles in a swellable gelatin matrix (14).…”

Temperature-induced shape morphing of bi-metallic structures

“…Moving beyond simple bilayers, which restrict the available shapes and structural responses that can be achieved, others have explored more complex architectures with the same goal of obtaining large displacements. Examples include origami [31], kirigami [32,33], metamaterials featuring bi-layer faces and connections, knitted arrays of thermally responsive fibers [34], as well as bi-material lattices capable of extreme shape changes [35]. The combination of architecture and material properties can allow significant shape morphing in response to temperature variations.…”

Electronic Textile by Dyeing Method for Multiresolution Physical Kineses Monitoring

“…By dyeing the hydrophilic treated stretchable polyester fabric into the silver ion precursor, because of the low viscosity and surface tension, the solution can adequately permeate the pretreated fiber network, which is the precondition for uniform silver coverage. [17] A realtime monitoring of differential and multielemental muscle movements could be obtained by a multichannel recorder (Figure 1e). The as-prepared electronic fabric demonstrates good stretchability (Figure 1d), which can be attached conformably at different positions of human body for basic kineses detection.…”

“…The as-prepared electronic fabric demonstrates good stretchability (Figure 1d), which can be attached conformably at different positions of human body for basic kineses detection. [17] A realtime monitoring of differential and multielemental muscle movements could be obtained by a multichannel recorder ( Figure 1e). With the convergence of handling large amounts of sensing information and multipoint analysis method, the complexity and similarity of human kineses could be precisely perceived and distinguished.…”