This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Like the folds in crumpled sheets or the footprints on recently trodden sand, certain materials mark their histories. Now, Yale researchers show that networks of flowing water and other fluids can store their own memories—similar to how a computer chip does—an innovation that could steer robots and provide insight into some simple organisms.
The results are published in Physical Review X. In Professor Amir Pahlavan's lab, researchers created a small chip with multiple tiny channels, each with a depth about half the width of a human hair. Inside these channels, they placed a series of flexible microfibers that stand in the way of the fluid flowing through the channels.
Pressure from the flow can cause the fibers to switch between two states, affecting how the fluid passes. This forms a "memory" of past flows, making each fiber's current state depend on its history and, when coupled, on the states of other fibers. The two stable configurations of each fiber can represent a zero or a one, much like a bit in computer memory.
Computers typically store information in electronic memory devices. This study, though, demonstrates that information about past flows can also be stored in the configurations of flexible fibers, which switch passively as the imposed flow changes. "While conventional microfluidics rely on active elements, this system uses microfibers to passively store information," said Abhineet Rajput, lead author of the study and a graduate student in Pahlavan's lab.
"These fibers can also be configured to interact, meaning they mutually influence one another's physical state, driving the emergence of complex, systemwide memory." One potential application would be in soft robotics designed to operate in environments where devices with traditional hardware can't function. That is, the flow rates and pressure levels of the fluids could take the place of electrical current, and the microfibers could act as valves and the channels as connections. "And in many of these environments, electronics might not be able to operate due to electromagnetic interference or other issues," said Pahlavan, assistant professor of mechanical engineering.
"So the idea here is that we could design a fully fluidic controller that can be integrated into a soft robot and effectively act as its brain." A longer-term question is whether these fluidic networks could be trained to perform useful tasks. That would extend the work from retaining information to physical learning, in which training changes a system's response to achieve a desired outcome. It could also give researchers some valuable insight into memory and learning in such living organisms as fungi, plant roots and the slime mold, the brainless, single-celled organism that can find the shortest way through a maze.
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