Researchers have managed to create a self-healing material that would not require additional circuitry to process different signals.
Science advances, and human beings create new materials, and now researchers have managed to create a new material that can “think” for itself.
As if it were material taken from a science fiction movie, now a team of researchers from the Pennsylvania State University and the United States Air Force they have created materials that “think” autonomously.
These findings have been published in the journal Nature and they speak of an intelligent material with the ability to process environmental stimuli and adapt functionally.
The researchers claim that it is made of a unique rubbery polymer and that this material can feel mechanical stresseither.
They comment that this rubber material mimics an integrated circuit without actually being an integrated circuit.
As they point out, the material has been created with reconfigurable circuits that can process complex arithmetic functions and can also convert the received information into electrical signals, similar to how humans think.
The principal investigator, Ryan Harnecomments that “we have created the first example of an engineered material that can simultaneously feel, think and act on mechanical stress without requiring additional circuitry to process the signals”.
He adds that “the soft polymer material acts as a brain that can receive digital strings of information that are subsequently processed, resulting in new strings of digital information that can control reactions”.
Some uses that can be given to this material is its ability to detect pathogens that cause disease or in intelligent search and rescue units. The polymer could also find its way into self-healing materials, yet researchers are currently trying to make this polymer sensitive to visual information.
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