MechE Colloquium: Emergent Computing in Mechanical Metamaterials
Event details
| Date | 03.10.2023 |
| Hour | 12:00 › 13:00 |
| Speaker | Prof. Martin van Hecke, Mechanical Metamaterials Group, AMOLF, and Leiden University |
| Location | Online |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Abstract: Bistable elements, controlled by buckling and snapping, naturally act as mechanical bits. The central tenet of this talk is that interactions between such bits allow flexible (meta) materials to exhibit complex orbits and store and process information. I will discuss metamaterials that count how often they are compressed and that can select and process input strings composed of complex compression cycles. These materials can be mapped to finite state machines so that their computational power can precisely be characterized. This work shines new light on the nonlinear response of complex materials and opens the door to ‘intelligent matter’.
Biography: Martin van Hecke is a group leader at AMOLF, Amsterdam, and a professor of physics at Leiden University. He works on the emergence of complex behavior in flexible and frustrated matter, combining experiments, simulations and theory. In the past decade he developed programmable, shape-shifting and self-folding metamaterials which straddle the boundary between material and machine; he is currently exploring how complex materials – from multistable metamaterials to crumpled sheets – can be understood from the perspective of information processing.
Biography: Martin van Hecke is a group leader at AMOLF, Amsterdam, and a professor of physics at Leiden University. He works on the emergence of complex behavior in flexible and frustrated matter, combining experiments, simulations and theory. In the past decade he developed programmable, shape-shifting and self-folding metamaterials which straddle the boundary between material and machine; he is currently exploring how complex materials – from multistable metamaterials to crumpled sheets – can be understood from the perspective of information processing.
Practical information
- General public
- Free