Summary:
UCLA researchers in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering have developed a fully compliant mechanism that performs mathematical operations using analog computing.
Background:
Mechanical computers rely on the relative motion of physical bodies to perform computations, rather than electronic signals, as electrical computers do. Unlike traditional electrical computers, mechanical computers can offer analog computing, operation in extreme environments, minimized wear, and immunity from radiation and electromagnetic interference. Compliant digital mechanisms have shown promise for some applications, but require many logic gates to perform simple computations and have longer path lengths, leading to signal delay and loss. Conversely, analog mechanisms compute signals more quickly through a shorter path, enabling rapid, compact computations. Mechanical analog computing also offers numerous potential applications, including embedded sensing and actuation, wearable or implantable medical devices, signal processing, robotics, prosthetics, and aerospace design. Current mechanical analog computers are limited by their fragility, bulkiness, and lack of modularity.
Innovation:
To address these limitations, researchers at UCLA have developed an analog mechanical computer that is modular, free of backlash, has nanometer precision, can be printed out of a single part, and has high reliability. By employing fully compliant mechanisms, the UCLA design has no sliding, rolling, or contact joints. The joints deform to achieve relative motion, allowing the signal to move at the material’s speed of sound. The compliant analog mechanisms allow signals to be propagated through a short path, permitting rapid and efficient mathematical computations. The inventors demonstrate that these novel compliant analog computational metamaterials (CACMs) perform complex operations such as addition, multiplication, exponentiation, and integration. The inventors foresee that these mechanisms can be fabricated at the microscopic level, which will enhance their resistance to extreme conditions, reducing their sensitivity to inertial loads, fatigue failure, and crushing forces. Another key innovation in the design is that the reference point for inputs and outputs is fixed. This enables scalable, modular architecture where multiple computational mechanisms can be chained together seamlessly. Thus, this technology overcomes prior limitations in mechanical computers by advancing their durability, compactness, scalability, and modularity.
Potential Applications:
● Analog computation
● Sensors
● Robotics
● Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)
● Aerospace/Defense
○ Radiation-proof guidance, navigation, and control systems (GNC)
● Space Systems
● Wearable/implantable medical devices
● Prosthetics
● Energy Harvesting & IoT
○ Ultra-low-power edge devices that mechanically compute or pre-process signals before transmission
Advantages:
● Rapid, real-time continuous computation
● No power consumption
● Nanometer precision
● Can be printed from a single part
● Durability
○ Radiation-hard
○ Reduced sensitivity to fatigue, inertial loads, crushing forces
○ Resistance to extreme conditions
○ Temperature insensitive
○ Immune to radiation and electromagnetic interference
● Minimized wear
○ Less moving parts
○ Material-efficient design
● Microscopic
○ Applicability for MEMS, sensors or robotic systems
● Modular & Scalable
● Reduced latency with real-time, continuous signal processing
● Robustness in extreme environments
Development-To-Date:
First successful demonstration of the invention
Related Papers:
[1] Song, Y., Panas, R.M., Chizari, S., Shaw, L.A., Mancini, J.A., Hopkins, J.B., Pascall, A.J., 2019, “Additively Manufacturable Micro-Mechanical Logic Gates,” Nature Communications, 10(1): 882
[2] Panas, R.M., Sun, F., Farzaneh, A., Cortes, J., Bekker, L., Johnson, H., Mancini, J., Pascall, A., Hopkins, J.B., 2023, “Signal Propagation through Resettable Mechanical Logic,” Research Square, DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2440784/v1
[3] Lecture: Embodied Intelligence in Nonlinear Elastic Systems, APS Global Physics Summit, Wednesday March 19 // Session MAR-L54 // Anaheim, California https://schedule.aps.org/smt/2025/events/MAR-L54/5
Reference:
UCLA Case No. 2025-230
Lead Inventor:
Jonathan B. Hopkins