IMMENSE’s challenge is to create materials and structures capable of receiving and exchanging signals, interpreting and comparing them, thus achieving the ability to self-learn and self-adapt.
It is a fundamental step towards the creation of sentient materials and structures.
While observing forests, bird flocks, insect swarms… we realise that the elements belonging to these complex biological systems possess the ability to receive and exchange signals in order to adapt to environmental conditions and to learn how to improve their performance even without centralised control.
But can materials and structures have the same abilities? How can we build devices that exchange information on a physical-mechanical basis and that know how to use this information to learn how to optimally react to external stimuli? To what extent can materials and structures be equipped with active inference processes that simulate brain activities?
The answers can be found in the IMMENSE (Inter materials and structures mechano-perception for self learning) project, for which Professor Alberto Corigliano of Politecnico di Milano has been awarded the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. The project will last five years and will end in 2029.
IMMENSE will study the foundations for the creation of a new class of materials and structures with the ability to receive signals, control and react, and will enable the creation of new devices for multiple applications, such as materials with self-diagnostic and repair capabilities, new ways of monitoring and controlling civil and industrial structures and infrastructures, new micro-robots and miniature autonomous vehicles.
The mechanics of solids and structures, fluid-structure interaction, multi-physics phenomena at the micro- and macro-scale will be used and appropriately combined with micro-structured smart materials, to achieve physical-mechanical reception and control capabilities.
The complex dynamic response of arrays of oscillators, coupled with innovative physical devices enabling the classification and recognition of signals, will be used to achieve learning and reaction capabilities.
Finally, proof of principle prototypes will be created to perform micro- and meso-scale experiments showing the behaviour of sentient materials and structures.
Alberto Corigliano is Professor of Solid and Structural Mechanics at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Politecnico di Milano.
He graduated in Civil Engineering (path: Structural Engineering) at Politecnico di Milano in 1988. There he has pursued his career, becoming a full professor in 2002.
He was an invited researcher at the Laboratoire de Mécanique et Technologie of the École Normale Supérieure in Cachan, France (now Université Paris-Saclay) from 1991 to 1992, as well as an invited professor at the same French institution for several months in 1996, 1997, 1999, 2006 and at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, USA in 2004.
In 2006, he won the Bruno Finzi prize for Rational Mechanics of the Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere, of which he became a corresponding member in 2018. In 2015, he was appointed Euromech Fellow by the European Mechanics Society.
He has worked on various research topics in the field of mechanics of materials and structures, including numerical simulation models and methods, damage and fracture phenomena, reliability, design and multi-physics problems in micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS), metamaterials, machine learning approaches applied to materials and structures. He has published over 360 scientific papers, including two books, is co-holder of several patents and co-founder and scientific consultant of a Politecnico di Milano spin-off.
