A fabric robot that can stand up, stiffen to support loads, and soften to change shape or return to flat. Researchers at Yale have developed a robotic fabric, a breakthrough that could lead to such innovations as adaptive clothing, self-deploying shelters, or lightweight shape-changing machinery. The lab of Prof. Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio has created a robotic fabric that includes actuation, sensing, and variable stiffness fibers while retaining all the qualities that make fabric so useful--flexibility, breathability, small storage footprint, and low weight. They demonstrated their robotic fabric going from a flat, ordinary fabric to a standing, load-bearing structure. They also showed a wearable robotic tourniquet and a small airplane with stowable/deployable fabric wings.

Soft robotics is a rapidly growing field with applications ranging from prosthetics to space exploration. Now a research team out of Yale University has taken the technology one step further with the invention of smart, robotic fabric that can change its shape and stiffness on the fly. The key to the material's capabilities lies within the fibers themselves. The team, led by Dr. Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, spun epoxy into fibers that can vary their stiffness thanks to the particles of Field's metal embedded within them. Field's metal is novel in that it liquefies at very low temperatures.

Scientists have created a robotic fabric that stiffens and relaxes in response to changes in temperature, which could be used in emergency situations. The material, developed at Yale University in the US, is equipped with a system of heat sensors and threads that stiffen to change the fabric's shape. Under heat changes, it can bend and twist to transform itself into adaptable clothing, shape-changing machinery and self-erecting shelters. Video footage shows the material going from a flat, ordinary fabric to a load-bearing structure supporting a weight, a model airplane with flexible wings and a wearable robotic tourniquet that activates in response to damage. 'We believe this technology can be leveraged to create self-deploying tents, robotic parachutes, and assistive clothing,' said Professor Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio at Yale University.