ShrinkCells are shape-changing actuators made from 3D printed thermoplastic polymers that use localized heat generated by conductive PLA to selectively trigger the shrinking of a Shape Memory Polymer. Unlike existing methods that apply global heat, ShrinkCells enable independent, simultaneous, or sequential control of multiple parts of an object using a single power supply. This allows 3D printed rigid structures to actuate in sequence and avoid self-collisions during unfolding. The work advances 4D fabrication through systematic study of selective heating, design and evaluation of ShrinkCells, and demonstration of their applications.
Kongpyung (Justin) Moon, Haeun Lee, Jeeeun Kim, and Andrea Bianchi. 2022. ShrinkCells: Localized and Sequential Shape-Changing Actuation of 3D-Printed Objects via Selective Heating. In Proceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ‘22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 86, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3526113.3545670