Text Box: Intelligent 
Autonomous
Systems 
Laboratory

Text Box: ‘Smart Surface’: Massively Parallel Actuator Array Controlled by Non-Linear Medium.

Text Box: Investigators, Funding and support:
The project is being developed by the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory at the University of the West of England, Bristol and funded by the EPSRC grant GR/S79640/01. The idea is supported by QinetiQ.
 

Text Box: Project description:

Text Box: Objectives:
Our long-term objective is to design a new type of  intelligent actuator for manipulation of objects, exploiting principals and phenomenology of space-time dynamics in non—linear media. 
The control of actuator (‘Smart Surface’) is based on findings in the fields of non-linear physics, smart materials and structures, phenomenology of pattern formation and emergence of computation in optical, reaction-diffusion chemical and biological excitable media.
There are numerous applications for machines based on these principles. Thus, intelligent manufacturing would benefit since the ‘Smart Surface’ would allow non-sequential fabrication: objects on a smart table conveyor would be able move at different speeds and pass each other as well as being able to be positioned and oriented.  Such a system would allow the dynamic routing of transport paths. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Text Box: CEMS, IAS Laboratory,
DuPont building,
Coldharbour Lane, Frenchay,
Bristol BS16 1QY

Text Box: Contacts: