Byun Junghwan, Pal Aniket, Ko Jongkuk, Sitti Metin
Physical Intelligence Department, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, 70569, Stuttgart, Germany.
Soft Hybrid Materials Research Center, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, 02792, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Nat Commun. 2024 Apr 4;15(1):2933. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-47201-y.
Mechanical computing offers a new modality to formulate computational autonomy in intelligent matter or machines without any external powering or active elements. Transition (or solitary) waves, induced by nonreciprocity in mechanical metamaterials comprising a chain of bistable elements, have proven to be a key ingredient for dissipation-free transmission and computation of mechanical information. However, advanced processing of mechanical information in existing designs is hindered by its dissipation when interacting with networked logic gates. Here, we present a metamaterial design strategy that allows non-dispersive mechanical solitary waves to compute multi-level cascaded logic functions, termed 'integrated mechanical computing', by propagating through a network of structurally heterogeneous computing units. From a perspective of characteristic potential energy, we establish an analytical framework that helps in understanding the solitary wave-based mechanical computation, and governs the mechanical design of key determinants for realizing cascaded logic computation, such as soliton profile and logic elements. The developed integrated mechanical computing systems are shown to receive, transmit and compute mechanical information to actuate intelligent soft machine prototypes in a seamless and integrated manner. These findings would pave the way for future intelligent robots and machines that perform computational operations between various non-electrical environmental inputs.
机械计算提供了一种新的模式，可在无需任何外部供电或有源元件的情况下，在智能物质或机器中实现计算自主性。由包含双稳态元件链的机械超材料中的非互易性所诱导的跃迁（或孤立）波，已被证明是机械信息无耗散传输和计算的关键要素。然而，在现有设计中，机械信息与网络化逻辑门相互作用时会出现耗散，这阻碍了对机械信息的高级处理。在此，我们提出一种超材料设计策略，通过让非色散机械孤立波穿过由结构异质计算单元构成的网络来计算多级级联逻辑函数，即所谓的“集成机械计算”。从特征势能的角度出发，我们建立了一个分析框架，有助于理解基于孤立波的机械计算，并指导实现级联逻辑计算的关键决定因素的机械设计，如孤子轮廓和逻辑元件。所开发的集成机械计算系统能够接收、传输和计算机械信息，以无缝集成的方式驱动智能软机器原型。这些发现将为未来在各种非电环境输入之间执行计算操作的智能机器人和机器铺平道路。
