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What are smart materials?

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Sat, 2013-06-08 22:08
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DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture
What are smart materials?
I'm having trouble making head or tails of smart materials. The impressions I'm getting is (in the context of Eclipse Phase), it is some sort of matter that is self repairing, self cleaning, self what have you, etc. It can change shape. It can change shape in response to the environment (such as a smart material tire making an indentation in the right place so when the wheel runs over a rock, the vehicle does not suffer a bump). It is a material that is both simultaneously hard and soft... It sounds too good to be true so I've been wondering if I've been reading the stuff wrong. I'm hoping that someone that is more knowledgeable in this stuff than I can help me make sense of things. Also if one of the devs could show up and help explain to me what the stuff should be in context of Eclipse Phase, that would be great too.
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Sat, 2013-06-08 22:29
Decivre Decivre's picture
No, you have it right. Smart
No, you have it right. Smart materials are still in their infancy today, but they do exist. [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WREwKx0qF7o]For an example, here is a shape-memory alloy.[/url] It is a metal that can be bent up, abused, and altered in whatever way you desire... and once hit with heat, will reshape itself into the form it "remembers".
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Sun, 2013-06-09 00:15
DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture
So, I'm not as far off as I
So, I'm not as far off as I thought? So if after thinking hard about smart materials, I'm left with the same kind of sensation you get after attending a lecture on quantum mechanics, that is a good thing? If I'm in the right ball park, then I'm going to need to think about a few questions (and other stuff) about what might be possible with smart materials. I know what kinds of questions I want to ask, I'm just not yet sure how to ask all of them.
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Sun, 2013-06-09 00:45
Decivre Decivre's picture
DivineWrath wrote:So, I'm not
DivineWrath wrote:
So, I'm not as far off as I thought? So if after thinking hard about smart materials, I'm left with the same kind of sensation you get after attending a lecture on quantum mechanics, that is a good thing?
I'd say so. I have a buddy who is a science teacher, and he thinks the whole field is damn profound. He thinks that in a couple decades, we could have self-assembling buildings, vehicles and devices that require no maintenance whatsoever, and dynamic clothing. He's as excited about smart materials as I tend to be about nanomanufacture.
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Mon, 2013-06-10 10:43
fafromnice fafromnice's picture
Ha ! vehicules that requires
Ha ! vehicules that requires no maintenance ! I wish it will be true ... but in the economic context i'm pessimist anyway, i have seen somewhere that the NASA is developping some kind of electronic muscle. Some kind of spring who can reshape itself and extend if a current is pass in they want to use it on satellites because it's light in comparaison of hydraulic piston, etc.
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What do you mean a butterfly cause this ? How a butterfly can cause an enviromental system overload on the other side of a 10 000 egos habitat ?

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Mon, 2013-06-10 11:57
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
There is a continuum from
There is a continuum from dumb to smart materials. Essentially you add more and more features and functionality to them, a bit like the different options for armor: they can be color-changing, have sensor properties, temperature control, metamaterial control over radiation, self-cleaning, self-repairing, shape-shifting, and so on. The more features you add, the pricier the material. I expect ultraflexible materials to be essentially nanoswarms, and hence not too popular anymore (one little hack, and your floor eats you!) But most are simply like normal materials with amazing extra features. I have had movable wood furniture show up in my games, able to sense and move while feeling exactly like wood.
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Extropian
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Mon, 2013-06-10 12:09
fafromnice fafromnice's picture
Best Titan Nano Viri EVER !!!
Best Titan Nano Viri EVER !!!! Ok I didn't read correctly
Quote:
(one little hack, and your floor eats you!)
I read on little hack, and your floss eats you So the little bastard is a mono-filament string who made really sharp web and it clearly a bastard to get rid off. Fun for all your Exhuman Familly
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What do you mean a butterfly cause this ? How a butterfly can cause an enviromental system overload on the other side of a 10 000 egos habitat ?

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Mon, 2013-06-10 14:02
Decivre Decivre's picture
One of my favorite thematic
One of my favorite thematic uses of smart materials in the game was when the playgroup went to a hedonist colony. Indoors, every building is effectively cobwebbed with veils and curtains to prohibit long-distance viewing and provide a degree of privacy, but these veils are thermally sensitive and fold and flex out of your way as you walk through the rooms. Plus on vehicles, I imagine most outer layers of the body are often made of shape-memory materials that bend back in place after an accident occurs, perhaps with either heat or electricity applied. It makes sense to me that you would want to use them in places where at least cosmetic damage is likely.
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Tue, 2013-06-11 17:56
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Here is a video of current
Here is a video of current smart material tech: http://vimeo.com/42289939 One aspect of this is the "homebrew" style: this is how I imagine many space colonists and autonomists making their habitats, although with more nanomachines in the pots.
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Extropian
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Tue, 2013-06-11 20:05
DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture
Ok, so I'm not a crazy as I
Ok, so I'm not a crazy as I thought (or I'm in a room full of crazies). Some of my ideas of things that might be handy and made out of smart materials include: A curtain that can eat dead skin cells that flake off people and happens to land on it. It'll eat the dead skin cells and convert it into additional mass to handle self repairs. It'll use sunlight (or any light at all) to gather energy. It can self-repair cuts and tears. It can be made to try to keep a room a certain amount of brightness, changing the amount of light it blocks coming in through the window to do that. A flexbot can change shape. I think it might be possible for a piece of shape changing material to have something in it move, apply an electrical charge, apply heat, and/or create some sort of disruption that causes the atoms surrounding the thing to rebind. The thing trying to change the shape of the matter will cause the mater to rebind themselves in such a way that it tries to keep an x amount of matter around the thing in all directions. Such a thing could be pushed outward and the matter would form a pseudopod or some sort of tentacle. I think such a thing already exists for cells like bacteria, as they have to split to reproduce or form pseudopods to move. I imagine that shape shifting materials in Eclipse Phase would be far more advanced than that though. I like to keep going, but I'm a bit distracted at the moment. Am I on the right track though? It seems that smart materials are like some sort of machines the like of which we are very unfamiliar with. A piece of metal that reverts to its original shape when heated seems to be ranked along side a lever or the wheel when compared to the stuff in Eclipse Phase.
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Wed, 2013-06-19 03:06
Justin Alexander Justin Alexander's picture
This has been mostly covered
This has been mostly covered by the other posters, but if you're specifically looking for what the term means in the Eclipse Phase universe, check out pg. 298 of the core rulebook: Many common items of technology are made from so-called smart materials. These devices contain—or sometimes consist entirely of—many small nanomachines that can both move and reshape themselves to alter the object’s shape, color, and texture. For example, smart clothing can transform from a suit of specialized cold weather clothing suitable for the Martian poles in winter to a fashionable suit in the latest style due to hundreds of thousands of tiny nanomachines in the clothing that shift and move to reshape the garment. Similarly, a tool made of smart materials can switch from a powered screwdriver to a wrench or a hammer, as the nanomachines move around and completely reshape the tool. Smart materials all contain specialized advanced nanomachine generators (p. 328) that keep them in perfect repair as long as they are regularly recharged.
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The Alexandrian
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Wed, 2013-06-19 03:14
Decivre Decivre's picture
DivineWrath wrote:I like to
DivineWrath wrote:
I like to keep going, but I'm a bit distracted at the moment. Am I on the right track though? It seems that smart materials are like some sort of machines the like of which we are very unfamiliar with. A piece of metal that reverts to its original shape when heated seems to be ranked along side a lever or the wheel when compared to the stuff in Eclipse Phase.
It's an umbrella term for any material that exhibits the ability to basically shape itself. And much like the term "solid", it contains a whole variety of things within that umbrella. I'm sure that the people in 10 AF have more specific terminology when referencing these materials. We just call all of them "smart materials" today.
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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