Self-Morphing of frustrated sheets – from the lab to the real world and from statics to locomotion

Humanity spends huge amounts of time, energy and resources in the shaping of solids into desired three-dimensional shapes. Unlike (nearly) all manmade structures, which are shaped by external constraints, most natural structures shape themselves via the distribution of non-uniform active growth. Apparently, this mode of shaping can be implemented with synthetic solid structures: Solids are not necessarily passive, they can be "programmed" to shape themselves upon induction.

I will briefly present the principles and status of the field of "self-Morphing". Then I will focus on two different projects. In the first we attempt to "export" self-morphing from the scientific community and lab scale, to the real world of architecture and design.

In the second project we try to bring the synthetic material as close to a living matter as possible. We construct gel sheets that autonomously metabolize chemical energy ("food") from their surroundings and convert it into periodic change of their curvature. When placing such ribbons on top of a fluid interface they perform a "surfing" motion. We show that the motion results from a mismatch between the curvatures of the ribbon and the fluid interface. We suggest that this "curvature-driven locomotion" is a generic phenomenon. We study it in a "dry", mechanical system and suggest that it is relevant to the motion of cells on curved surfaces (curvotaxis).