Active surfaces based on mEMS

Technologies such as MEMS open the door to a new paradigm for engineering design, in which large arrays of distributed sensors, actuators, and computational elements are coated on surfaces, embedded in materials, and distributed throughout the environment. At Xerox PARC, we are exploring this tight coupling of computation with the material world, which we call 'Smart Matter'.

This talk will describe a novel approach that combines Printed Circuit Board Technology with MEMS technology to batch fabricate large-area arrays of released mechanical structures that are of macro-scale size. As an initial demonstration of this approach, we have batch-fabricated a passively-addressed array of 256 electrostatically-actuated valves and air jets. The intended application is a planar robotic system consisting of thousands of distributed sensors and actuators that are capable of levitating and transporting flexible media, such as paper.

We have also been exploring the diverse engineering challenges posed by this distributed approach - issues such as how to use air to achieve a tight coupling between a multiplicity of micro-scale actions and a macro-scale object, how to go about coordinating thousands of (unreliable) sensors and actuators, and how to predict the operating range of these actively controlled systems.

This talk describes work done jointly with Patrick Cheung, Dave Biegelsen, Warren Jackson, and Rachel Lau.