FibeRobo: Fabricating 4D Fiber Interfaces by Continuous Drawing of Temperature Tunable Liquid Crystal Elastomers Jack Forman, Ozgun Kilic, Sarah Nicita, Rosalie Lin, Liu Yang, Megan Hofmann, Akshay Kothakonda, Cedric Honnet, Kristen Dorsey, Neil Gershenfeld, and Hiroshi Ishii
We present FibeRobo, a thermally-actuated liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) fiber that can be embedded or structured into textiles and enable silent and responsive interactions with shape-changing, fiber-based interfaces. Three definitive properties distinguish FibeRobo from other actuating threads explored in HCI. First, they exhibit rapid thermal self-reversing actuation with large displacements (∼40%) without twisting. Second, we present a reproducible UV fiber drawing setup that produces hundreds of meters of fiber with a sub-millimeter diameter. Third, FibeRobo is fully compatible with existing textile manufacturing machinery such as weaving looms, embroidery, and industrial knitting machines. This paper contributes to developing temperature-responsive LCE fibers, a facile and scalable fabrication pipeline with optional heating element integration for digital control, mechanical characterization, and the establishment of higher hierarchical textile structures and design space. Finally, we introduce a set of demonstrations that illustrate the design space FibeRobo enables.