A prototype programmable fiberglass cloth fabricated

Materials with memory are not new, but for the first time, Harvard physicists forced a flat plate to assemble into relatively complex structures.

A square fiberglass plate lined with a silicon layer and a foil of 32 triangles is first folded like an origami, and then heated to 420 degrees for half an hour. For 30 minutes, the bends “remember” which object was rolled up from the sheet (so far only a boat or an airplane is obtained).
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If the plate is expanded to cool and then heated again, but already to 70 degrees, then the sheet itself will be folded into the desired structure. How this happens you can see in the video. Round dots are magnets that prevent the assembled boat from falling apart after it cools down again.

The second stage of the researchers' work is aimed at teaching the plates to unfold themselves. Then from them it will be possible to collect something already useful. Solar panels for example.

via seas.harvard.edu