Have you ever wanted to compress your computer to make it faster? If you like such an “active” approach, researchers have developed a computer that can do calculations if you just squeeze it. When mechanical stress is applied to it, the computer “senses” and “thinks”, turning the deformation into a process.
Publishing their work in Nature, the researchers developed a mechanical integrated circuit made of rubber with rubber-silver connections that can calculate complex arithmetic. This metamaterial responds to forces applied to it, just as our skin reacts to a stimulus.
“We have developed the first example of an engineering material that can simultaneously sense, think, and act on mechanical stress without requiring additional circuitry to process such signals,” said lead researcher Professor Ryan Harne of Penn State. It acts like a brain that can then receive the processed digital information strings, resulting in new digital information strings that can control reactions.”
In one of the applications tested, the material was used to add two numbers together. The numbers were chosen by smashing the rubber block left and right. The material then started working and performed the logical operation. Mechanical information was converted into electrical signals.
The material has many other possible applications as well. It can be used not only to respond to a mechanical stimulus, but also to detect and respond to radio waves, or it can be adapted to transmit certain light signals. A “sensing” and “thinking” material could be used in autonomous search-and-rescue systems, infrastructure warnings and repairs, and even bio-hybrid materials that could be used to detect and isolate pathogens.
“We’re turning it into a ‘sight’ tool to increase the sense of ‘touch’ we’re creating now,” Harne says. is to develop a material that illustrates navigation.”
The approach shows that we don’t need silicon semiconductors to build simple and scalable computing.
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