S2E10

From Nano to Macro: Actuators for Real-World Applications

Functional Nanomaterial Composites for Soft Sensing and Actuation

Abstract:

Actuators, also known as artificial muscles, are an integral part of daily life. From transportation means to biomedical devices, they all utilize actuators for one or more vital tasks. Cycle life, cost, output force, strain, energy density, power density, and efficiency are the key performance metrics that are used to evaluate the suitability of actuators for a specific application. The emerging field of soft actuators has been introducing new classes of stimuli-responsive materials that can mimic muscle’s properties (i.e., generating strain, changing stiffness). While these materials outperform the performance of the human muscle in one or more of the mentioned attributes, there is still no stimuli-responsive material that can beat the human muscle in all of them. In this talk, an overview of the field will be given and the current challenges and possible directions will be discussed.

Abstract:

Soft machines have many applications, ranging from multifunctional wearable medical devices for feedback therapy to prosthetics, non-invasive surgical tools, and soft robots for safe human-robot interaction. High-performance flexible sensors and actuators are the key components of soft machines. In this seminar, I will cover our latest research activities on the development of functional nanocomposites based wearable strain sensors for human motion detection and soft robotics. I will demonstrate how bioinspired structures can help to improve the sensing and skin-adhesion performance of wearable sensors. The next part of my talk will focus on the development of programmable soft actuators based on composite materials. Finally, I will address challenges associated with the design of integrated soft machines capable of multimodal sensing and controlled stimulation.