Self-healing UI
2019
From lizard tails to starfish arms, from grafted trees to human skin, living things in nature have long been utilizing the ability to “heal” their wounds on the soft bodies to survive in the outer environment. In order to impart this self-healing property to our daily life interface, we propose Self-healing UI, a soft-bodied interface that can intrinsically self-heal damages, reconfigure and fuse without external stimuli or glue.
This is a collaborative effort among Islam Research Group, Morphing Matter Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, and Kawahara Lab at the University of Tokyo.
By Koya Narumi*, Fang Qin*, Siyuan Liu, Huai-Yu Peter Cheng, Jianzhe Gu, Yoshihiro Kawahara, Mohammad Islam, Lining Yao (*Contributed Equally)
Publications: PDF | DOI
Award: Best Paper Award at WISS 2019
News: History Channel | Fast Company
The key material to achieving Self-healing UI is MWCNTs-PBS, a composite material of a self-healing polymer polyborosiloxane (PBS) and a filler material multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), which retains mechanical and electrical self-healability. We developed a hybrid model that combines PBS, MWCNTs-PBS, and other common soft materials including fabric and silicone to build interface devices with self-healing, sensing, and actuation capability.
We mimicked the heart warming/breaking moment with our self-healing materials. We embedded LED components and MWCNTs-PBS cut sensor inside. The heart can detect when it is cut into halves or joined together. A broken heart can 'heal' completely in 6 hours.
Conventional pneumatic soft actuators were subject to the small damage. We propose a cuttable and thereby reconfigurable version of such actuators. Originally, the actuator bent into a “C” curve. After cutting one node of the actuator and attaching the cut piece upside down, however, the actuator formed an “S” curve. When we shortened the length of the actuator and attached the end piece back, a shorter version of the “C” curve still worked in the same way as the longer one.
Sonication to disperse MWCNT into PBS to form the self-healing and conductive materials, MWCNTs-PBS composite.
