Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists say they may have found a way for structures and materials to morph from one shape into another.

The scientists say their science-fiction-like discovery might lead to an airplane that morphs on demand, from an energy efficient shape into one that’s better suited to agility; or a boat’s hull that changes shape to allow more efficient movement in choppy, calm or shallow waters.

MIT’s work involves a new application of rechargeable batteries.

Batteries expand and contract as they are charged and recharged. This has generally been thought to be something detrimental to batteries. But I thought we could use this behavior to another end: the actuation, or movement, of large-scale structures, said Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor of materials science and engineering.

The researchers have demonstrated basic battery-based actuators that can pull and push with great force. Later this year, they hope to demonstrate the shape-morphing of a helicopter rotor blade that should make it possible for a helicopter to carry heavier loads.

Morphing is an interpolation technique used to create from two objects a series of intermediate objects that change continuously to make a smooth transition from the source to the target. Morphing has been done in two dimensions by varying the values of the pixels of one image to make a different image, or in three dimensions by varying the values of three-dimensional pixels. We’re presenting here a new type of morphing, which transforms the geometry of three dimensional models, creating intermediate objects which are all clearly defined three-dimensional objects, which can be translated, rotated, scaled, zoomed-into.

Two-dimensional morphing is transforming an array of m by n pixels into another array progressively. An intermediate value between two pixels can be obtained by interpolating rgb values of the source and end pixels in more or less complicated ways. However, straight color interpolation creates many unwanted side effects such as ghosting and unnatural transitions.

Three dimensional morphing has been done using more or less the same technique. Instead of dealing with pixels in a two-dimensional image though, the people who did this used pixels in a three dimensional structure. The algorithms however are still the same, the features identified being now points, edges, cubes, and other three-dimensional structures.

The MIT approach is different however, from any prior work we could find on morphing. They are transforming objects, and not interpolating pixels. They are dealing with transforming the geometry itself of an object. The representation of a three-dimensional object is a union of the triangles in its triangulation, and our goal is an algorithm that maps triangles in the source object to triangles in the target.

Three dimensional morphing of objects

The three-dimensional morpher creates intermediate scenes, calculating the geometry of every scene that falls between the source and the target. In the figure above, every intermediate object between a table and a chair, is an object by itself, and it’s hard to know when the object stops being a table and starts being showing smooth transitions of geometry as well as the color varying continuously.