SMILE

SMILE will connect four interdisciplinary researchers from EPICUR universities to establish a nucleus for a European consortium in Intelligent Soft Matter Engineering. Through graduate student exchanges, collaborative research, and a joint Graduate Research Symposium, the project will explore how nonlinear mechanics, kirigami, foams, and active metamaterials, can be harnessed to create intelligent soft matter systems. SMILE will strengthen interdisciplinary skills and lay the foundation for future European initiatives in soft robotic matter and soft functional materials.

Basic levels of intelligence are shared among all living organisms and entail the ability to adapt and interact with the physical environment to accomplish a goal. Even plants and unicellular organisms, despite not having a nervous system, are capable of complex behaviors, which are essential to their survival and reproduction. Such physical intelligence emerges due to the complex and nonlinear physical properties of the materials and structures, as well as the interaction in collectives, and is mostly rooted in the soft matter nature of biological systems. SMILE aims at bringing together experts in soft matter physics and engineering that work on creating artificial systems that exhibit physical intelligence. The goal is unveiling new soft mechanisms, materials and structures that can be harnessed to obtain life-like functionaliries and shape the new generation of active matter, robotic materials and soft robots (Figure 1). We will investigate how intelligent behavior emerges in such systems due to the nonlinear mechanics of engineered soft matter, with the objective of shaping a European consortium for a future proposal and strengthening learning activities in the EPICUR network in this field.