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Scientists have created an elephant robot named “EleBot” with impressive range of motion and strength that allows it to perform a wide variety of tasks. It does so by utilizing technology, including programmable 3D‑printed foam lattice, that allows it to function similarly to actual biological tissues.
“Natural musculoskeletal systems combine soft tissues and rigid structures to achieve diverse mechanical behaviors that are both adaptive and precise,” the researchers wrote in their report published in the journal Science Advances. “Inspired by these systems, we propose a programming method for designing bioinspired soft-rigid robotic structures using lattice geometries made from a single material.”
The scientists at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland explained in a press release about their research that they created the elephant robot using a new lattice structure made of a simple foam material composed of individual units (cells) that can be programmed to have different shapes and positions. “These cells can then take on over one million different configurations and even be combined to yield infinite geometric variations,” they wrote.
“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,” added postdoctoral researcher Qinghua Guan. “This shows that our method offers a scalable solution for designing unprecedentedly lightweight, adaptable robots.”
Possible applications
“Like honeycomb, the strength-to-weight ratio of the lattice can be very high, enabling very lightweight and efficient robots,” said Josie Hughes of the Computational Robot Design and Fabrication Lab (CREATE) at EPFL’s School of Engineering. “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.”
Programmable lattices can also, according to an Earth.com report, “house wires, microfluidic channels, or embedded sensors without drilling holes” which “could lead to artificial limbs where muscles, nerves, and bones grow from the same print job.”