Lausanne scientists create 3D-printed elephant robot

Disclaimer: not a real elephant. Keystone-SDA

Researchers at the Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) have succeeded in creating a robot elephant using a 3D-printable lattice structure.

Using a simple foam, the programmable structure manages to reproduce all the diversity of biological tissues, from a flexible trunk to a rigid bone, EPFL wrote on ThursdayExternal link.

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It is extremely difficult to reproduce musculoskeletal diversity in robotics. The EPFL team led by Josie Hughes addressed this by developing a lattice structure that combines the diversity of biological tissues with robotic control and precision.

The lattice, made from simple foam, is made of individual units, or cells, that can be programmed to take various shapes and positions. The cells can assume more than a million different configurations and can be combined to produce infinite geometric variations.

“We used our programmable 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,” explains postdoctoral researcher Qinghua Guan said in the press release.

As well as modulating the shape of each cell, the scientists can also programme their position in the lattice. This second dimension of programming allows them to rotate and move each cell along its axis.

Cells can even be superimposed on each other to create entirely new combinations, giving the resulting lattice an even wider range of mechanical properties. A lattice cube with four superimposed cells can provide around 4 million possible configurations.

For this elephant model, this dual programming capability enabled the fabrication of several types of tissue, including a sliding plane joint (found in the small bones of the paw), a flexing uniaxial joint (in the knee) and a bidirectional flexing biaxial joint (in the toes).

The team was also able to reproduce the complex movement of the elephant’s muscular trunk by designing separate lattice sections dedicated to torsional, flexural and rotational movements, while maintaining smooth and continuous transitions between them, according to this work published in the journal Science Advances.

“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,” Hughes said.

Translated from French by DeepL/dos

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