Soft Robotics: Flexible Active Skin: Large Reconfigurable Arrays of Individually Addressed Shape Memory Polymer Actuators (Adv. Mater. Technol. 10/2017)

Abstract

In article number 1700102, Herbert Shea and co-workers report a flexible active skin consisting of a matrix of 32 × 24 individually addressable tactile pixels, based on shape memory polymer (SMP) actuators with integrated stretchable heaters. The wearable sleeve weighs only 55 g, is 2 mm thick and has a 99% actuator yield. Applications in haptic displays and active camouflage are demonstrated.