Squid-Inspired Materials for Healing, Display and Encryption in Soft Robotic Devices

Recent progress in soft robotics has motivated the search for new materials and actuators that can replicate biological functions and behaviors (such as sensing, healing, powering, etc.) with autonomy and complexity. In this talk, we will introduce cephalopod-inspired structural proteins with dynamic supramolecular nanostructures that regulate their physical properties. We demonstrate the dynamic properties of squid-inspired polypeptides in self-healing protein networks with healing strength and kinetics surpassing those typically found in other natural and synthetic soft polymers. This family of cephalopod proteins and their biosynthetic derivatives have opened new opportunities in bioinspired design for adaptive functional materials and soft devices with enhanced autonomy and durability, and we will demonstrate their implementation in self-healing and reconfigurable soft actuators. Furthermore, we will introduce a soft display system inspired in squid skin composed of active particle swarm metamaterial with emergent display, computing, memory, and encryption functions.