Soft, flexible material that can perform complex calculations developed

Researchers at the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF) in the Netherlands have developed a novel soft, flexible rubber metamaterial capable of performing complex calculations, specifically matrix-vector multiplications, by exploiting “floppy modes”—movements that require minimal energy. Unlike traditional rigid electronics, this elastic material uses a tile-based design where each tile maps inputs to outputs through controlled deformations of beams and joints, enabling programmable and low-power mechanical computation directly within the material. This approach bypasses the usual energy-consuming conversions between physical signals and digital processing, potentially revolutionizing soft robotics, mechanical sensors, and embedded information processing in soft matter. The metamaterial consists of a rubber sheet patterned into repeating units, with beam angles determining matrix weights that can be positive or negative. Inputs are applied as displacements at the sheet’s edges, and outputs correspond to the computed results. Simulations incorporating finite element modeling and automatic differentiation confirm the material’s ability to perform accurate, low-energy computations. However, performance is