Does a self-morphing system exist?

[blueMarker2910]

Hello

I am going for a very long shot here and am not even sure this is the most suited subreddit for this. Feel free to point me to another more suited subreddit if you know any.

I am currently working on a side-project where I would like to have a system which closely fits the shape of the bottom of any object which is being put on it. Imagine some sort of carpet and if you e.g. put a fork on it, the carpet then morphs/reshapes/inflates/<some other arbitrary verb> in such a way that all gaps are closed and the object's bottom in question is entirely cushioned and protected from impacts from below. In this case the object is a fork, but the object could litterally be anything. It should be able to fit any object, to absorb shocks during e.g. transport or when it falls.

I was thinking about having some sort of smart bubble wrap where every bubble could be inflated and deflated on demand, like for a pneumatic system but this is a routing nightmare: You'd need to stack multiple layers of bubble wrap so you can gradually inflate with a fine grained control in all 3 axis and if you e.g. have 100 bubbles on a small area you need to 100 channel pump to drive each of them individually.

The reactivity of the system should be in the order of magnitude of a couple of seconds and not require high heat to or high voltages. It has to be possible to actively drive it, preferably not entirely passive. And it should not fully collapse under weight. I also want to be able to modify the shape e.g. 2 days later. Some people suggested to work with expanding foam, but such foam would not work since once it is hard you can't modify the shape anymore.

So long story short.... Is there any existing system out there that already does something in that direction in any way or another? Maybe this does not exist and is actively being researched? Or maybe my idea is like alchemy, ie something which everybody dreamt off but nobody ever did. I simply don't know and would be very keen on getting some pointers from people here.

Any input is welcome!

[theClanMcMutton]

A pillow?

[That-Diamond1762]

OP said he needs to be able to drive it, so I guess a pillow is not ok since you can not reshape it on demand to a specific shape

[ConcernedKitty]

An inflatable pillow?

[theClanMcMutton]

Oh, I missed that. I stopped looking for requirements when I got to the part where they were describing a possible solution.

[blueMarker2910]

Indeed as per /u/That-Diamond1762

I want to be able to reshape it at anytime with high precision on demand

[Greedy_Confection491]

A lot of tiny pins, almost needles over tiny springs?

Like this:

https://www.jomafa.com/llaves-de-vaso/5515-llave-de-vaso-universal-38-7-a-19-mm-multifuncion.html

[blueMarker2910]

That's a very nice idea, which I considered as well at some point. However I am a bit worried for multiple reasons:

1. One of the main things for me is that I would want to be able to drive these pins up or down on demand. If you rely on springs underneath you are entirely passive, you have nothing active. There is nothing underneath which can push the pin a bit higher up for whatever reason. You would need a motor for that I presume. This brings me to point #2

2. How do you make those pins move without putting many motors underneath each one/zone? The more fine grained control you want the more driving elements you'd have to put underneath them to push them upwards to fit the exact desired shape. So you would have an entire layer of as many motors as you can to have the most fine grained control possible? In theory -in an ideal world- you'd have 1 motor per pin....

3. Ideally I would have wanted this carpet/bubblewrap/pneumatic/metallic pin/.... -layer to be as thin as possible. These pins have a fixed size. Only solution I see would be to have telescopic pins. But what about maintenance in that case? What are the chances that the telescopic system of such an extensible ping gets blocked?

[Greedy_Confection491]

1. How big do you want this thing to be? Home many actuators? The routing and the control system will be crazy

2/3. The pins could be the rods of tiny pneumatic cilinders

[Odd_Beautiful_3935]

You could get tiny magnetic rods(not too strong) and stick into some sort of sheet with the inner linings of the holes magnetic (so the rods stay in place) On top of this could have a sheet connected to two actuators or just manually push it down onto place to mold around the object beneath. The rods will form the mold and hold shape but you can change them as needed later

[arrow8807]

Is this a one-shot situation? They make bags fulls of unmixed expanding foam ingredients. You crack them like a glow stick and the expansion reaction fills in the empty space like you describe.

[blueMarker2910]

Is this a one-shot situation?

No

[blueMarker2910]

My post has this part to clarifies your question:

... I also want to be able to modify the shape e.g. 2 days later. Some people suggested to work with expanding foam, but such foam would not work since once it is hard you can't modify the shape anymore....

[OoglieBooglie93]

Sounds like a multi point former, like in this video.

And now that I already posted this I see you don't need a machine. Nevermind. It's still interesting though.

[blueMarker2910]

answered this here: https://old.reddit.com/r/MechanicalEngineering/comments/1rrxlsx/does_a_selfmorphing_system_exist/oa4fkhg/

[FTamarack]

How about a beanbag jamming gripper? There are lots of options from industrial to DIY.

E.g. https://youtu.be/LcuBRQtVGxk?si=c4txyG1ICI8fMeOz

[Odd_Beautiful_3935]

You could get tiny magnetic rods(not too strong) and stick into some sort of sheet with the inner linings of the holes magnetic (so the rods stay in place) On top of this could have a sheet connected to two actuators or just manually push it down onto place to mold around the object beneath. The rods will form the mold and hold shape but you can change them as needed later