Actuation in soft matter

It has recently been shown that elastic materials may be architected to display remarkable functionality when harnessing mechanical instabilities. These so called mechanical-metamaterials are however often passive elastic structures, which undergo deformations when prompted by external loading. Different modes of actuation have been proposed, such as pressure controlled grabbing fingers in soft-robotics, swelling in shape-morphing gels, electrostatics in dielectric elastomers or temperature in liquid cristal polymers or shape memory alloys. How can these different solution be integrated in future manufactured devices? We are seeking contributions studying the fundamental and practical aspects of the integration of actuation in the design of soft materials. Particularly, we are interested in the (1) the mechanisms of amplification of an input via the architecture of the materials and (2) the programability of a complex response using a simple mode of actuation. This session would be in the core of recent GSOFT topics as illustrated in the previous editions of the March meeting, eg Soft Interfaces Mechanics, Robophysics, Extreme Mechanical Instabilities, Origami and kirigami of metamaterials.