RoboAICon2023: Hydrogel-based, magnetically controlled smart transformers
Researchers are creating clever soft transformers to drastically speed up research applications in the lab, much like the intelligent robots that appeared in the "Transformers" movie that could change shapes and function in many ways. Dachuan Zhang and a research team in materials science and chemical sciences in China have presented a remotely controlled soft transformer based on a shape memory hydrogel system. The paper has now been published in Advanced Intelligent Systems . By incorporating magnetite (Fe3O4) magnetic nanoparticles into a double network polymer structure of poly (N-(2-hydroxyethyl) acrylamide) containing gelatin, the research team was able to produce the hydrogel. While the magnetite nanoparticles provided photothermal heating and magnetic manipulation functions to distort the hydrogel for navigation in a magnetic field, the reversible coil-triple-helix transformation of the gelatin component gave the hydrogel shape memory and self-healing properties....