Demonstration of the robotic gripper made out of langoustine tails. 2025 CREATE Lab EPFL CC BY SA.
By Celia Luterbacher
Though many roboticists right this moment flip to nature to encourage their designs, even bioinspired robots are often fabricated from non-biological supplies like metallic, plastic and composites. However a brand new experimental robotic manipulator from the Computational Robotic Design and Fabrication Lab (CREATE Lab) in EPFL’s College of Engineering turns this pattern on its head: its most important characteristic is a pair of langoustine stomach exoskeletons.
Though it could look uncommon, CREATE Lab head Josie Hughes explains that combining organic components with artificial elements holds important potential not solely to reinforce robotics, but additionally to assist sustainable expertise techniques.
“Exoskeletons mix mineralized shells with joint membranes, offering a stability of rigidity and adaptability that enables their segments to maneuver independently. These options allow crustaceans’ speedy, high-torque actions in water, however they will also be very helpful for robotics. And by repurposing meals waste, we suggest a sustainable cyclic design course of through which supplies may be recycled and tailored for brand new duties.”
In a paper printed in Superior Science, Hughes and her workforce show three robotic purposes by augmenting the exoskeletons of langoustines, which had beforehand been harvested and processed for the meals trade, with the exact management and longevity of artificial elements: a manipulator that may deal with objects weighing as much as 500g, grippers that may bend and grasp numerous objects, and a swimming robotic.
Design, function, recycle, repeat
For his or her research, the CREATE Lab determined to convey collectively the structural robustness and adaptability of the exoskeletons of langoustines with the exact management and longevity of artificial elements.
They achieved this by embedding an elastomer contained in the exoskeleton to regulate every of its segments after which mounting it on a motorized base to modulate its stiffness response (extension and flexion). Lastly, the workforce lined the exoskeleton in a silicon coating to strengthen it and lengthen its lifespan.
When mounted on the motorized base, the machine can be utilized to maneuver an object weighing as much as 500 g right into a goal zone. When mounted as a gripping pair, two exoskeletons can efficiently grasp a wide range of objects ranging in measurement and form from a highlighter pen to a tomato. The robotic system may even be used to propel a swimming robotic with two flapping exoskeletal ‘fins’ at speeds of as much as 11 centimeters per second.
After use, the exoskeleton and its robotic base may be separated and many of the artificial elements may be reused. “To our information, we’re the primary to suggest a proof of idea to combine meals waste right into a robotic system that mixes sustainable design with reuse and recycling,” says CREATE Lab researcher and first writer Sareum Kim.
One limitation of the strategy lies within the pure variation in organic constructions; for instance, the distinctive form of every langoustine tail implies that the two- ‘fingered’ gripper bends barely in a different way on either side. The researchers say this problem would require the event of extra superior artificial augmentation mechanisms like tunable controllers. With such enhancements, the workforce sees potential for future techniques integrating bioderived structural components, for instance in biomedical implants or bio-system monitoring platforms.
“Though nature doesn’t essentially present the optimum kind, it nonetheless outperforms many synthetic techniques and gives helpful insights for designing purposeful machines based mostly on elegant ideas,” Hughes summarizes.
Learn the work in full
Useless Matter, Residing Machines: Repurposing Crustaceans’ Stomach Exoskeleton for Bio-Hybrid Robots, S. Kim, Ok. Gilday, and J. Hughes, Adv. Sci. (2025).
EPFL
(École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) is a analysis institute and college in Lausanne, Switzerland, that focuses on pure sciences and engineering.
EPFL
(École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) is a analysis institute and college in Lausanne, Switzerland, that focuses on pure sciences and engineering.
