New material offers ‘massive reconfigurability in future military platforms’

The first-of-its-kind, 3D printable and stimuli-responsive polymeric materials offer new opportunities for morphing unmanned air vehicles and robotic platforms, said Dr. Frank Gardea, an aerospace engineer and principal investigator of this work for the US Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory.

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Army researchers envision a future platform, suitable for air and ground missions, with the reconfiguration characteristics of the T-1000 character in Terminator 2, he said. As the research matures, the epoxy material is expected to have massive reconfigurability and have embedded intelligence allowing it to autonomously adapt to its environment without external control.

"We want a system of materials to simultaneously provide structure, sensing and response," Gardea said in a statement.

The material currently responds to temperature, which researchers first selected because of its ease of use during laboratory testing. In the real world, applying a temperature stimulus is more challenging so they introduced light-responsiveness as it is easier to control and apply remotely, Gardea said.