Gating and reversing mechanical signals

There has been a renewed interest in unconventional computing platforms that can be embedded directly into soft materials. One paradigm for this is soft, mechanical computing which takes advantage of internal, multistable mechanical elements to encode, process, and store information (memories). I will argue that to realize these practically, however, one must understand how information might move in an elastic material: can signal cascades be maintained over long distances and when do higher order buckling modes interfere with signals? I will discuss recent work on some simple models of buckling cascades that addresses this question.