Creating Objects That Build Themselves | Nat Geo Live

Skylar Tibbits: We focus on designing physical components

that can build themselves.

So, this project proposes that

you can have self-assembly at very large scales

This is interesting for construction scenarios

where it’s hard to get to, it’s dangerous

there is extreme environments

it’s hard to get people or machines

or where it’s difficult to build things

in space, under water, etc…

that we could potentially deposit materials

and they could come together to build highly functional things.

In this case it’s a ten-by-ten-by-ten space frame.

When the helium dies you’re left with a large rigid structure.

The other category of research we look at is

How to program physical materials

to change shape and property on demand.

On the top left is our materials and geometry.

That’s the obvious stuff.

Everything we know in the physical world

is made out of materials and geometry.

Each one of those though responds to

different types of energy.

If you have moisture, you might want to use wood.

If you have metal, you might want to use heat to activate it.

And the way that we design the geometry

and how those materials come together

creates mechanical transformation and

allows us to control how it folds, curls, bends or twists.

And we’ve released three materials so far.

The first one is programmable carbon fiber

textiles, and wood.

With wood there’s a long history of using wood

as an active building material.

From Japanese joinery that would use moisture

to make more precise tight joints to contemporary examples.

But there’s two main problems.

One of the problems is that there’s a lot of energy

that goes into forcing plywood to form into arbitrary shapes.

You have to force it and steam it and have molds.

The other is that you are constrained by

the grain direction that you can find in the forest.

So, we print wood, we actually deposit wood

we chop it up into a pulp with sawdust and adhesive or plastics

we’re able to print different grain directions.

Two-dimensional patterns, three-dimensional patterns

that allow it to fold, curl, twist and

go from any one arbitrary shape into any other arbitrary shape.

So, we believe that today we program computers and machines

and tomorrow we’ll program matter itself.

Thank you.

( applause )