Abstract
Mechanical metamaterials have emerged as promising tools for enabling mechanical intelligence in soft machines through interaction with the external environment. Note that most representative results in the literature focused on certain features of information processing with the designs of novel metamaterials. It remains challenging to design metamaterials with more integrated information processing capabilities toward comprehensive intelligence. In this work, a novel approach employing programmable multi-stability of perforated shells (PS) with staggered trapezoidal voids is proposed to develop transformable, information-processing metamaterials with high-density information. Multi-layer information storage, encoding, decoding, and reading are achieved by designing and arranging different types of PSs under mechanical compression or magnetic actuation. In addition, various application-oriented functionalities, such as information encryption, mechanical computing, wave amplification, and pressure transmission, are also demonstrated by taking advantage of the stable memory and tunable stiffness distributions of metamaterials. The proposed design strategy paves the way for multifunctional, miniaturized, and scalable information mechanical metamaterials, with significant potential for soft-material-based intelligent devices.