SoftCubes: Towards a soft modular matter

This paper proposes a soft self-assembling modular matter, which is called SoftCubes where serially connected soft cubes can be extremely stretched by external tension and has a self-recovery capability to an originally designed 3-D shape. The developed soft modular matter has three main design features. First, entire modules of the 3-D assembled shape are serially connected. Such a structure allows all the modules to be disassembled and stretched by external tension. Second, the modules are made of soft stretchable elastomer. The soft-body of the modules provides a high flexibility and an extreme shape adaptation capability with the disassembled modules. Also, if the external tension is removed, the original 3-D shape is self-recovered by the elastic restoring force of soft-bodied modules. Finally, small permanent magnets are embedded in each module. The magnetic attraction between modules makes them self-assembled and precisely aligned with the neighbor modules in a lattice structure. The paper presents various analyses, simulations, and demonstrations about soft modular matter's shape reconfiguration to 1-D and self-recovery to 3-D. The designed soft modular matter could enable new applications as injectable medical implants and implantable modular devices.