Elephant Robot Demonstrates 3D Fabric Printing Technology – YouTube
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A first-of-its-kind robot elephant can pick flowers and play bowling thanks to 3D printing technology that mimics biological tissue, according to a new study.
Scientists in Switzerland have developed a programmable lattice structure that can take on different shapes, allowing the robot to have a flexible synthetic body capable of performing delicate tasks and a rigid support structure in the legs for more natural movement.
The researchers demonstrated the benefits of their geometric lattice design by showing the elephant robot delicately grasping a flower with its trunk and kicking a bowling ball. In a video released by the researchers, the elephant robot knocks down seven out of ten pins by hitting them with a small ball.
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The lattice is made of foam and consists of many individual blocks, or cells, that the researchers can program into different shapes and positions. The team says their technology can support more than a million different configurations, which together create an “infinite” number of geometric variations, allowing for lightweight, adaptive robots, according to a new study published Wednesday (July 16) in the journal Science Advances.
“We used our programmable lattice technology to create 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,” said first author Qinghua Guan, a researcher in the Laboratory of Computer-Aided Robot Design and Fabrication at the Federal University of
Sourse: www.livescience.com
