Purdue University Mark

Purdue University

Robotic Materials and Fabrication of Designer Polymers

Form + Function 4-D Printer


Typical 3-D printers only print the form of an object. For example, many maker spaces print personalized smart phone cases. Mass customization is a great benefit of rapid, 3-D printing capability. But we wnat to combine the printing of form with the printing of function. We want to print the entire smart phone! That's why we call this 4-D Printing because we are going beyond the 3 dimensions of form to tackle the rapid-prototyping of function. Fucntion consists of sensing, computation and actuation, as well as the software and firmware that goes with it. This page highlights the results of a $2.6M project, funded largely by an NSF MRI grant (CNS-1726865), to develop the next generation of rapid prototyping printer that we think will revolutionize the co-design of form + function.

Structured Computational Polymers


Much of this work is co-sponsored by the NSF Center for Robots and Sensors for the Human Well-Being (RoSe-HUB). This site also reflects work as a participant in the National Science Foundation grant CNS-1450342.

We are developing a synthesis method for creating "designer polymers" -- robotic materials of interest to desingers of smart systems of all kinds.

Publications

  • S. Eom, P. Abbaraju, Y. Xu, B.R. Nair and R.M. Voyles, "Embedded Neuromorphic Architecture for Form + Function 4-D Printing of Robotic Materials: Emulation of Optimized Neurons, in Proc. of the 2021 IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, 2021.
  • M. Ayad, N.R. Aghamohammadi, R. Nawrocki, R.M. Voyles and D. Kusuma, "Designer Polymers: Additive Manufacturing of Smart Materials as a Complement to Injection Molding," in SPE Annual Technical Conference, Detroit, MI, Mar., 2019.
  • M. Ayad, R. Nawrocki, R.M. Voyles, J. Lee, H. Lee, D. Leon-Salas, "NUCLEOs: Toward Rapid-Prototyping of Robotic Materials That Can Sense, Think and Act," in ASME Conf on Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems, San Antonio, TX, Nov., 2018.
  • R.A. Nawrocki, R.M. Voyles, S.E. Shaheen, "A Mini Review of Neuromorphic Architectures and Implementations," in IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, v.63 n. 10, 2016, pp. 3819-3829.
  • R.M. Voyles, P. Abbaraju, D. Leon-Salas, S. Sanjana, A. Lakshmanan, "Soft Robotic Skin from Intelligent Meta-Materials," in Advancements in Automation, Robotics and Sensing, 2016, pp. 121-137.
  • R.A. Nawrocki, R.M. Voyles, S.E. Shaheen, "Neurons in Polymer: Hardware Neural Units Based on Polymer Memristive Devices and Polymer Transistors," in IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, v. 61, n. 10, 2014, pp. 3513 - 3519.
  • R.A. Nawrocki, E.M. Gallager, D.P. Ostrowski, B.A. Bailey, X. Jiang, R.M. Voyles, N. Kopidakis, D.C. Olson, S.E. Shaheen, "An inverted, organic WORM device based on PEDOT:PSS with very low turn-on voltage," in Organic Electronics, v. 15, n. 8, 2014, pp. 1791-1798.
  • N. Correll, R. Voyles, "Robotic materials: From smart polymers to computational metamaterials," in Proc. Robot Makers Workshop, Robotics: Science Systems Conf. 2014
  • R.A. Nawrocki, X. Yang, S.E. Shaheen and R.M. Voyles, "Structured Computational Polymers for a soft robot: Actuation and cognition," in Proc. of the 2011 IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, v. 1, pp. 5115-5122.
  • R.A. Nawrocki, S. Shaheen, X. Yang, and R.M. Voyles, "Towards an All-Polymer Robot for Search and Rescue," in IEEE Workshop on Safety, Security and Rescue Robots, Denver, CO, Nov., 2009.
  • X. Yang, R.M. Voyles, K. Li and S. Povilus, "Experimental Comparison of Robotics Locomotion with Passive Tether and Active Tether," in IEEE Workshop on Safety, Security and Rescue Robots, Denver, CO, Nov., 2009.

Robotics Sources

Distributed Robotics Source List

Semiconductor Manufacturers

Copyright: © 2017-2019 by Richard M. Voyles


rvoyles [at] purdue [dot] edu

Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, (765) 494-4600