Single-Piece Mechanisms Created Using an Advanced Metamaterial

A team of researchers at Germany’s Hasso Plattner Institute have created a series of single-piece mechanisms created using an advanced metamaterial. The material can be designed with rigid or flexible cells that control how the material moves when acted on. The team created a door latch, a pair of pliers, a pantograph, and a Jansen walker using the material to demonstrate some of its capabilities.

So far, metamaterials were understood as materials—we want to think of them as machines.