You’ve heard of smart phones, smart meters, smart watches… Well now it’s the turn of smart materials. In the future, solid objects will react, sense, change and move according to their surroundings. This won’t be a result of clever robotics or electronics, but rather the fundamental properties of the stuff itself. In years to come, we will be living in self-regulating houses, riding self-fixing bicycles, and driving on self-illuminating roads, all thanks to these so-called ‘smart materials’. These are metals, plastics, fabrics and fluids that react to the outside world without any human involvement, and they promise to change the way we live. In this talk, award-winning materials scientist and engineer Dr Anna Ploszajski will show you the smart materials that will make the material world around us smarter. Expect to see matter doing things you’ve never seen it do before!
