近日，荷兰阿姆斯特丹大学Coulais, Corentin团队报道了学会改变形状的超材料。这一研究成果发表在2026年4月7日出版的《自然—物理学》杂志上。

从细胞到组织乃至动物，学习如何改变形状是生物体适应与演化的一项基本策略。人造材料虽也能展现先进的形状变形能力，却缺乏学习的能力。

研究组构建了一种能够通过对比学习方案学习复杂形状变化响应的超材料。通过向其展示目标形状变化的示例，该超材料能够逐步更新其内部学习自由度（即局部刚度），从而学会这些形状变化。与传统材料一次性设计成型不同，该超材料具备依次遗忘并学习新形状变化的能力，能够学习多种破坏互易性的形状变化，还能学习多稳态形状变化，进而实现反射性抓取动作和运动。该研究确立了超材料作为物理学习这一激动人心平台的潜力，并为利用物理学习设计适应性材料与机器人开辟了新途径。

附：英文原文

Title: Metamaterials that learn to change shape

Author: Du, Yao, van Mastrigt, Ryan, Veenstra, Jonas, Coulais, Corentin

Issue&Volume: 2026-04-07

Abstract: Learning how to change shape is a fundamental strategy in the adaptation and evolution of living organisms, from cells to tissues and animals. Human-made materials can also exhibit advanced shape-morphing capabilities but lack the ability to learn. Here we build metamaterials that can learn complex shape-changing responses using a contrastive learning scheme. By being shown examples of the target shape changes, our metamaterials are able to learn those shape changes by progressively updating their internal learning degrees of freedom—the local stiffnesses. Unlike traditional materials that are designed once and for all, our metamaterials have the ability to forget and learn new shape changes in sequence, to learn several shape changes that break reciprocity, and to learn multistable shape changes, which in turn allows them to perform reflex gripping actions and locomotion. Our findings establish metamaterials as an exciting platform for physical learning, which in turn opens avenues for the use of physical learning to design adaptive materials and robots.

DOI: 10.1038/s41567-026-03226-2

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-026-03226-2