A 3D-printed minigripper, consisting of shape-memory hinges and adaptive touching
tips, grasps a cap screw.
Credit: Qi (Kevin) Ge
Bendable 3D-printed structures that, when heated, quickly snap back to their original shapes could help make sophisticated drug-delivery devices or origami robots, researchers said.
Engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Singapore University of Technology and Design have devised a new fabrication process that uses ultraviolet (UV) light to print successive layers of polymers into 3D, Transformer-like structures that "remember" their shapes.
The creators call the process 4D printing, because the structures change over the fourth dimension — time — when subjected to a stimuli like heat. This is the first time 4D printing has been done on the submicrometer scale and with response times measured in tens of seconds rather than tens of minutes, the researchers said. [The 6 Strangest Robots Ever Created] https://www.livescience.com/55976-bendable-heat-responsive-robots-created.html
