Skylar Tibbits Self-Assembly Lab, MIT + Christophe Guberan + Erik Demaine + Carbitex LLC + Autodesk Inc.

Gallery: MIT lab develops programmable shape-shifting carbon fibre Gallery Gallery: MIT lab develops programmable shape-shifting carbon fibre + 3

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MIT's Self-Assembly Lab has developed materials that can be programmed to transform their shape autonomously -- from flexible carbon fibre and hybrid plastics to wood grains and textiles.


Skylar Tibbits, director of Self-Assembly Lab and research scientist at MIT -- as well as one of the WIRED2014 Innovation Fellows -- spoke to WIRED.co.uk exclusively about his research lab's latest discoveries with these programmable materials. "The idea here is to take existing material systems like fibres, sheets, strands and three-dimensional objects and program them to change shape and property on demand," Tibbits explains. "It's sort of like a vision of a robots without wire, motors or batteries."

Tibbits spoke at TED in 2013 about the emergence of 4D printing, where he demonstrated materials that reacted to passive energy sources like water, folding twisting to a programmed shape. "We released it at TED the response totally blew us away," Tibbits says. "A lot of people wanted to write about it, and a lot of people were excited about it. More importantly a lot of companies came to us, and saw applications that we never would've expected."

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Companies began suggesting different applications and asking what other materials could be programmed. "Across the board, from apparel, furniture, construction and medical to aviation and automotive industries were interested," he says. "What we've done in the past six months is try to develop a suite of materials that have different activation energies, like heat, light, water, air pressure, et cetera."

Their most exciting project is their work with Carbitex, a company that makes flexible carbon fibre now used in products like luggage and shoes and industrial applications. "We're releasing self-transforming carbon fibre," Tibbits tells WIRED.co.uk. "It's fully cured but designed to be flexible. What we do is we print with different materials on to the carbon fibre to make it active."


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This material has made its way to aircraft manufacturer Airbus, looking into replacing the need for a robotic mechanism or an opening that causes drag at the top of a jet engine. Programmable carbon fibre is a bi-directional material, meaning it can regulate the airflow for cooling the engine depending on the amount of heat -- eliminating the need for batteries, sensors and electronics that can be failure-prone and heavy. "It's extremely light and strong, like carbon fibre, but it can open and close on its own."

The programmable carbon fibre is also being explored by supercar manufacturer Briggs Automotive Company for aerodynamics, working on the first non-mechanical morphing car airfoil. "The airfoil can change in different weather conditions," Tibbits explains. "So flaps can open up to give them more control or stability in the back, and then they can close down when it gets dry again."

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Tibbits says they're also working on rubber that could be programmed for adaptive traction. "For shoes, tyres, those kinds of applications, as it gets wet, the grip can change," he says.


The Self-Assembly Lab has teamed up with product designer Christophe Guberan and computer scientist Erik Demaine from MIT to create custom wood filaments as well. "Wood for a long time has been used as an active material," says Tibbits. "If you get wood wet it starts to curl, especially with thin veneer. Now we can actually print with wood grain, so we literally print out the grains that we want. When it gets wet, we can get a really complex and strange or unique transformation because we're customising our own grain."

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The hard part is getting the design of the wood grain right. "If you have a very simple example to go from a flat sheet to a 90-degree fold, it's easy," Tibbits explains. "But especially with a lot of complex grains, it becomes challenging."

Using Autodesk's software Project Cyborg, the Self-Assembly Lab has been able to control how the programmable materials will move, using data from past experiments to simulate until a file can be produced and sent to print. "What we do is we actually print with a constraint," he says. "We print a material that goes on top of it, which then creates a direction. So for example, when the wood gets wet it curls based on the grain, and we can dictate which way it curls."

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Previously there was a large amount of labour required to get wood to bend - steaming, pressure-treating or forcing it around moulds, for example. "It's this new opportunity that we can produce and ship these things flat in the factory, and have them potentially vacuum-packed with moisture in them. When you open the package on the other side, it curls into the pre-programmed product that you purchased."

This kind of adaptive material could work its way into transporting certain goods as well. The potential in material responding to different temperatures or altitudes -- or even blunt impacts -- by adjusting its strength could prevent damage during shipping and make for smarter packaging. "Whenever I present this to people, one of the first things they'll say is 'Talk to IKEA!

IKEA could flat-pack and then it can assemble all by itself', but in shipping it's more about preventing damage during shipment."

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"Over the past year or year and a half all of these companies have been coming to us, and so now what we're hoping to show is this isn't just plastics that you can print with," Tibbits explains. "We can also do this with nearly any material, and make this in very real-world applications that can have a huge impact."

When talking about his move from architecture to computer science, Tibbits explains the change to digital. "Architecture changed dramatically when software was introduced. If you really wanted to push the limits of software you would either stay and get constrained by what's possible, or you start writing your own code.


I saw this as code is changing design, and thenthrough digital fabrication code was changing how we made things. That's exactly when I went to MIT and basically realised there is a whole world out there of programming and computing."

With two masters -- one in design computation, and one in computer science -- Tibbits talks about the benefit of studying computer science. "I became interested in combing the two worlds - the physical world of architecture and the digital world of computer science. Our work is truly about finding ways to embed programmability into our materials and physical surrounds."

Skylar Tibbits is speaking at Wired2014 on 16-17 October.

Tickets are on sale now: see wired.co.uk/14 for a full speaker list and further information. WIRED subscribers receive a 10 percent discount