Simple new computer made entirely from rubber?

In a paper published in PNAS, physicists from Leiden University in the Netherlands have used a piece of corrugated rubber as a computer.

The rubber is placed in a press and then slowly crushed by it. Initially, the corrugations slowly deform before suddenly snapping into another shape. Researchers Martin van Hecke and Hadrien Bense used these snaps as bits, where the rubber buckling denotes a shift from 0 to 1 and unbuckling represents a shift back to 0.

The pair charted all states using cameras, identifying three bits. Consequently, eight possible states are theoretically possible. The system is shown to have a crude form of memory and can count to two. A video was posted to the Leiden Institute of Physics' YouTube channel showing the system's progression.

"The state of the system depends not only on the pressure, but also on its past," said Bense.

". . . In effect, it counts the number of squeezes," said Bense. "That is a form of information processing, even if it's a very simple one," said Van Hecke.

The research is part of an overarching field looking at "mechanical metamaterials," materials whose properties are not only dependent upon the properties of the material itself but also its mechanical structure.

You can read more from the paper here.