NUCLEOs: Toward Rapid-Prototyping of Robotic Materials That Can Sense, Think and Act

Abstract

Robotic Materials are materials that have sensing, computation and, possibly actuation, distributed throughout the bulk of the material. In such a material, we envision semiconducting polymer based sensing, actuation, and information processing for on-board decision making to be designed, in tandem, with the smart product that will be implemented with the smart material. Prior work in printing polymer semiconductors for sensing and cognition have focused on highly energetic inkjet printing. Alternatively, we are developing liquid polymer extrusion processes to work hand-in-hand with existing solid polymer extrusion processes (such as Fused Deposition Manufacturing - FDM) to simultaneously deposit sensing, computation, actuation and structure. We demonstrate the successful extrusion printing of conductors and capacitors to impedance-match a new, higher-performance organic transistor design that solves the cascading problem of the device previously reported and is more amenable to liquid extrusion printing. Consequently, these printed devices are integrated into a sheet material that is folded into a 3-D, six-legged walking machine with attached electric motor.