Scientists say this robot elephant could be the future of robotics

By Dean Murray

A cute robot elephant could be the future of robotics.

The scaled-down jumbo has been built to demonstrate a cutting-edge bioinspired 3D printing technology.

Researchers at EPFL university in Switzerland say they have pioneered a 3D-printable, programmable lattice structure for robotics that mimics the vast diversity of biological tissues – from a flexible trunk to rigid bone – using a single foam material.

Copying the range of muscles and bones found in living creatures is very difficult in robotics. So far, one way to build robots with both soft and hard parts has been to use 3D printing with different materials. However, this method can’t continuously control important features like flexibility or strength across the whole robot.

A team led by Josie Hughes in the Computational Robot Design and Fabrication Lab (CREATE) in EPFL’s School of Engineering has developed an innovative lattice structure that combines the diversity of biological tissues with robotic control and precision.

The lattice, made of a simple foam material, is composed of individual units (cells) that can be programmed to have different shapes and positions. These cells can take on over one million different configurations and even be combined to yield infinite geometric variations.

EPFL said: "A cheetah’s powerful sprint, a snake’s lithe slither, or a human’s deft grasp: each is made possible by the seamless interplay between soft and rigid tissues.

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"Muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones work together to provide the energy, precision, and range of motion needed to perform the complex movements seen throughout the animal kingdom."

Postdoctoral researcher Qinghua Guan said: "We used our programmable lattice technique to build a musculoskeletal-inspired elephant robot with a soft trunk that can twist, bend and rotate, as well as more rigid hip, knee, and foot joints.

"This shows that our method offers a scalable solution for designing unprecedentedly lightweight, adaptable robots."

Josie Hughes added that in addition to modifying the foam material or incorporating new cell shapes, their unique foam lattice technology structure offers many exciting possibilities for future robotics research.

She said: "Like honeycomb, the strength-to-weight ratio of the lattice can be very high, enabling very lightweight and efficient robots.

"The open foam structure is well-suited for motion in fluids, and even offers potential for including other materials, like sensors, within the structure to provide further intelligence to foams."

The research has recently been published in Science Advances.