Bio-inspired Innovation
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CORDIScovery podcast- Episode #18 - Bio-inspired Innovation
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:10:05 - 00:00:15:24
Abigail Acton
This is CORDIScovery.
00:00:16:01 - 00:00:41:08
Abigail Acton
Hello. Welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery with me, Abigail Acton. 100,000 starlings move in unison against an autumn sky. Not one collides. Fireflies light up a wood in Borneo, flashing in perfect synchronicity. Bacteria communicate around a plant's roots. Once the population reaches a certain number. While up in the air, the wings of an eastern amber wing dragonfly have 3000 sensory neurons, including flow sensors, to prevent a stall.
00:00:41:10 - 00:00:55:10
Abigail Acton
What can we learn about these marvels? What can we learn from them? Nature is a source of inspiration for artists and scientists alike. So how are our three guests exploring the fascinating world of bio inspired innovation?
00:00:55:12 - 00:01:16:07
Abigail Acton
Currently at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany, Nico Bruns leads the Sustainable Functional Polymers Research Group. The team is using bio inspired approaches to design, engineer and realized materials and nanosystems with unprecedented new functions. Nico is particularly interested in the properties of the polymer composites making up plant cuticles. Welcome, Nico.
00:01:16:09 - 00:01:18:24
Nico Bruns
Hello. Thanks a lot Abigail.
00:01:19:01 - 00:01:37:12
Abigail Acton
Massimo Trotta is based at the Italian National Council for Science in Bari. His research activity has always been connected to photosynthesis. More recently, the environmental applications of photosynthetic organisms have attracted his attention. Massimo is also involved in popularizing science for a non-specialist audience. Massimo, You're in the right place today. Hi.
00:01:37:14 - 00:01:40:24
Massimo Trotta
Hi. Nice being here. Thank you for inviting me.
00:01:41:01 - 00:01:57:04
Abigail Acton
Lucia Beccai is a senior researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa and the head of the Soft Bio Robotics Perception Lab. She is interested in tactile sensing for soft robotics and versatile grasping, and is particularly focused on what we can learn from elephant trunks. Hello, Lucia.
00:01:57:06 - 00:01:59:23
Lucia Beccai
Hello, Abigail and everyone. Glad to be here.
00:02:00:00 - 00:02:15:15
Abigail Acton
We're very glad to have you. Nicco, I'm going to turn to you first. Your project club, Matsu, was interested in identifying materials with novel properties, drawing on plants and the surfaces of petals and leaves. Can you tell us a little bit more about the various characteristics of leaves and petals and why those are of interest?
00:02:15:17 - 00:02:47:17
Nico Bruns
Well, the cuticle of of plants is the outermost layer. It is basically sitting on top of the cells of plant leaves and petals. So it's kind of the skin of the plant to the outside. And as our skin, it has a lot of different functions at to regulates water intake and water retention. So it's a it's a membrane sometimes and some plants that can even create structural color so that the clan plants get a certain hue and certain color changes.
00:02:47:19 - 00:03:10:09
Nico Bruns
And our it regulates what can attach to the plant and what not. So if you think of either thinks that should it have like bees that attach to the petals or things that should not attach like predators, like small insects that eat up the plants. And of course the plants have created surfaces that are so structured that they can stick or maybe fall off.
00:03:10:11 - 00:03:28:19
Abigail Acton
so there's a huge diversity of surfaces that they have and motivations for efficiency motivations or reasons for those surfaces existence. So how on earth did you go about replicating these in the lab? What what what approach did you have to trying to develop your own version of these various surfaces? And which ones were you most interested in?
00:03:28:19 - 00:03:29:04
Abigail Acton
Naturally.
00:03:29:06 - 00:03:55:03
Nico Bruns
So the way to approach bio inspired materials research is to look at nature and try to identify the working principles behind this. You know, the functions that nature offers and then replicate this not necessarily with the same materials and the same same building blocks that nature uses. But, you know, taking advantage of all the other nice materials that we chemists can produce and apply.
00:03:55:05 - 00:04:24:20
Nico Bruns
So therefore, we look at nature, we look at how nature try to solve some, let's say, engineering problems and then engineer our own materials that replicate this in the European project format. So we have a couple of super interesting projects. One was, for example, to replicate the structural color found in plant petals and as a result, a group in Cambridge created glitter.
00:04:24:20 - 00:04:38:11
Nico Bruns
So things that you can add into, into cosmetics, but it's not based on plastics, but in this case on cellulose. And the color just appears because of the arrangement of the cellulose molecules in these in these flakes.
00:04:38:13 - 00:04:49:15
Abigail Acton
And so the arrangement of the cellulose molecules in the flakes replicates or is an echo of the way that the cellulose molecules are arranged in the in the iridescent plants.
00:04:49:15 - 00:04:50:07
Nico Bruns
Yes, indeed.
00:04:50:08 - 00:05:08:04
Abigail Acton
So you see how the iridescence occurs in the plants and then you create a mirror or an echo of that in the oak. And so obviously that's going to be much more environmentally friendly. But what other attributes does this have? What other uses can these have? Generally? Not necessarily the iridescence, for example.
00:05:08:05 - 00:05:33:07
Nico Bruns
Another very fascinating example from the research consortium is to look at the structure of the plant leaves the plant petals and see how insects. So potato beetles actually can stick on them. So the colleagues did experiments where they put little a little hair onto a potato people and then let it crawl on the surface and measure the forces that these little beetles can can exert.
00:05:33:09 - 00:06:04:18
Nico Bruns
And then they exchanged the real leaves with with replicas first, basically just kind of a replica molded ultimately. And then they went on and created artificial surfaces with the same type of wrinkling structures. So where these beetles again start to slip. The idea being at some point to have like an nonstick coating that you can basically coat onto onto plants in order to avoid that these these beetles or other people crawl up the plants.
00:06:04:20 - 00:06:24:06
Abigail Acton
And that's obviously brilliant. And so basically you're taking a solution that the air that the plant is found in and actually may be offering it to other plants as a sort of a non-chemical pesticide, basically a prevention. That's excellent. Superb. And and I think that you were also interested in certain proteins. Can you tell us a little bit about more about the proteins that you were interested in?
00:06:24:08 - 00:06:51:04
Nico Bruns
In my own research group, we are interested in how to combine proteins as building blocks from nature with synthetic materials, with polymers and plastics. And particularly in this project, we looked at a way to coat surfaces that are that need to be lubricate. You know, think of of small moving pieces in in let's say a mechanical watch or any any type of instrument that has mechanical moving parts.
00:06:51:06 - 00:07:22:16
Nico Bruns
And there you need to have what is called a lifelong lubrication because you're not going to put oil there every every couple of months. And then it's gone, like in your bicycle chain or something. But these are encapsulated systems with special lubricating liquids. And one task is to keep the liquid at the side where it should remain. And in order to solve that, we turned to two proteins and to a balanced approach where we basically took proteins that like to stick to surfaces and change their wetting behavior of the surface.
00:07:22:16 - 00:07:30:23
Nico Bruns
For these lubrication oils so that the lubrication drop then remained sitting at the defined position.
00:07:31:00 - 00:07:41:20
Abigail Acton
Stays in place. That sounds hugely challenging and it, I don't know, just from a completely non expert perspective, it must involve an awful lot of trial and error, but it also sounds like puzzle solving.
00:07:41:22 - 00:07:49:00
Nico Bruns
As any science. It's always, you know, if you do like to play with things and try out things, then you're right in the.
00:07:49:02 - 00:08:04:20
Abigail Acton
Yes. Yes, indeed. Wonderful. Thank you very much. And so, Niko, just thinking about the future, I mean, not necessarily just your work, but globally, where do you see bio inspired innovation that draws on plants and the richness that plants can offer? Where do you see that going? What do you think's down the pipeline?
00:08:04:22 - 00:08:33:06
Nico Bruns
Well, one thing that we also as a research team want to address in the future is to see where we can adapt to adapting parts of the plants. Yeah. So plants to adapt to to their environment, but usually relatively slowly they grow. And so this is not fast movement at long lasting kind of slow movement and adaptation and this kind of self adapting materials there.
00:08:33:09 - 00:09:00:10
Nico Bruns
There exists a lot of concepts already in the scientific literature, but you can learn a lot from nature how nature solves this and for example, adapts the surface while it expands and while the plant grows, or in response to different levels of humidity on the outside or, you know, plant hairs that that are on a surface and then raise up and lay down, providing a bit of shading, adaptable shading.
00:09:00:12 - 00:09:20:15
Nico Bruns
So all these this question of a more dynamic, if a plant can be dynamic, yeah, that's these aspects are questions that that we think have a lot of potential in order to provide technological solutions that might be more environmentally friendly and just produce cool materials that can do things.
00:09:20:16 - 00:09:28:08
Abigail Acton
Cool materials are always a good thing to have all of them producing cool materials. Excellent. Thank you so much. Nico does anyone have any questions or observations?
00:09:28:13 - 00:09:59:24
Lucia Beccai
Yes, I do have one. This is Lucia and amazing research, Nico, that you are doing. And so my question is about your controlling actually the the kind of the lubricant and all that you can obtain by synthesizing your materials. And do you think this works also the inverse? I mean, could you also control the lack of sort of slippery, let's say, condition on a surface?
00:10:00:01 - 00:10:13:10
Lucia Beccai
I see this because this would be really amazing interest in robotics, in making surfaces that in grippers, for example, can adapt or not to objects.
00:10:13:12 - 00:10:17:05
Abigail Acton
That's an excellent question. Yeah, that's a really cool question. Yes, Nico.
00:10:17:07 - 00:10:21:02
Nico Bruns
So basically, to create structures that are sticky on the mat.
00:10:21:04 - 00:10:24:02
Lucia Beccai
Yes, it's a hard question. But to me.
00:10:24:08 - 00:10:57:07
Nico Bruns
Then no, no, it's in general that that is of course possible because as a polymer chemist we know which which polymers, which macromolecules are stickier microscopically. And there are a lot of polymers that where you can actually switch behavior depending on temperature. For example, small temperature changes that make a gel collapse and then to become completely different. So yeah, in principle, yes, it should.
00:10:57:09 - 00:10:58:09
Nico Bruns
That should work.
00:10:58:11 - 00:11:25:11
Abigail Acton
It's interesting to see the consider the overlap between between the notion of robotics and and biomimicry when it comes to surfaces because of course with gripping that's a it's a central feature. I'm thinking of geckos immediately but yeah. Excellent. Thank you very much for that question. Actually, I'm just going to turn to Massimo now. Massimo. Hi. For your project set out to explore the boundary between technology and nature, looking at bio hybrid systems based on photosynthetic organisms and smart materials and devices.
00:11:25:11 - 00:11:41:15
Abigail Acton
So you were looking at the at the bridge between what we produce and what nature produces, and I think that's really interesting. So can you tell us a little bit more about your fascination with photosynthesis and why you moved away from the idea of trying to mimic it, to harnessing it instead?
00:11:41:17 - 00:12:10:15
Massimo Trotta
Well, I think the main idea comes from the fact that you do not want to replicate whatever is in nature in your laboratory, because the chances that you can replicate billions of years of evolution are very slim. So if I may say, my fascination comes from scientific literature meeting, discussion with colleagues, but most of all from beer. Yeah, that's that's really important because.
00:12:10:18 - 00:12:11:15
Abigail Acton
Bio inspired in fact.
00:12:11:15 - 00:12:36:19
Massimo Trotta
Bio-inspired if you can make yeasts to produce almost any color or any taste of beer why cannot be thinking of harnessing photosynthetic systems to give us energy as much as you do for a beer. So if you can't beat them, join them. That's my way of thinking.
00:12:36:21 - 00:12:43:06
Abigail Acton
That's an excellent principle. So your project, were you what were you actually setting out to to look at? What were you considering?
00:12:43:08 - 00:13:15:11
Massimo Trotta
We were considering a completely new way of making the interaction within a device. With every kind of device you have with this biological systems. And the think is that biological systems are not designed by nature to interact with devices. This thinks is the main drawback. When you think of a biological system, there has to work for us. So if you want really convinced is well convinced it's almost humanized plants.
00:13:15:11 - 00:13:46:21
Massimo Trotta
But if you really want to harness this biological system, then you have to use to be gentle. You have to not be dangerous for a day surviving. And and this entire system is based on using molecules, namely conductive polymers, to interact with the plants or the algae or the micro-organisms in such a way that they will be willing to interact without giving up and moving somewhere else and not on the device.
00:13:46:21 - 00:13:47:19
Massimo Trotta
We want them to grow.
00:13:47:19 - 00:13:48:24
Abigail Acton
Or dying even.
00:13:48:24 - 00:13:50:09
Massimo Trotta
Yeah, Or even dying.
00:13:50:12 - 00:14:12:10
Abigail Acton
Yeah. So. So you use something that is minimally invasive and is made up of polymers so that the the organism in question accepts it and tolerates it more. Why? I mean, what are you actually hoping to find out? What are you hoping to establish? You mentioned, for example, bacteria. I believe they're what what are you hoping that that will show you?
00:14:12:12 - 00:14:49:01
Massimo Trotta
Well, there are a few things that can be shown. Well, let me say one thing is important. Size matters here. If you want to interact with a tree, then you have to go to micro dimension. If you want to interact with the bacteria, you have to go to nano. Of course, the toothpicks are very different. If you want to make a hole through the bark or through the particular of any leaf, then you have to have stirred in our system, which though does not make any harm to the leaf or to the bark.
00:14:49:03 - 00:15:21:08
Massimo Trotta
And you can do that. You can actually do that, but you cannot get electrons out and electrons are what you need. Electrons are a way of responding to a stimulation and stimuli from external changes. Once you read electrons, you're fine. And how you do that, covering your very sturdy material with polymer that conduct electrons similarly to how metals do, but in a way that is fine for the plant or for the leaf.
00:15:21:08 - 00:15:30:16
Abigail Acton
Right? So you are conducting your electrons, but what does that do? How does that what does that show you or what do you hope to do? What do you hope to achieve with that conductivity you know.
00:15:30:18 - 00:15:58:23
Massimo Trotta
There are everything you can get the state of dehydration, of the tree, and then answer to that by watering the plant at the right moment, at the right time. So it can be a very useful task for beating rough. So it is a way of optimizing agriculture in a way or you can look for a specific response to specific molecules.
00:15:59:00 - 00:16:28:06
Massimo Trotta
Next Sugars. Definitely. What is the amount of this sugar Do we need to shade or have different kind of action from the man who is growing that the avocado plant or whatever? So the idea is to interact continuously with these kind of systems all on a nano sides, to have this connection so well designed that the bugs are really willing to give up electrons and they would do the same on the nanoscale.
00:16:28:11 - 00:16:33:06
Abigail Acton
So it's almost as if you can talk to the plant or the animal that you are, you are connecting with.
00:16:33:08 - 00:16:47:01
Massimo Trotta
In a way. In a way you are, you might, you may communicate. Electrons are the language. It's not English, but that's a fantastic way of saying it. You communicate, you are electrons, lovely.
00:16:47:02 - 00:16:51:09
Abigail Acton
And so what did you find in your project? What did you achieve?
00:16:51:11 - 00:17:19:15
Massimo Trotta
it's it's very interesting. At this moment we were able to obtain the variation. For example, Elaine is established and her group in Linköping with the group in Umea were able to, to find a way to detect the amount of glucose in sucrose within the clay, which is one of the a small channel that runs through the plant to conduct water chemical and other stuff.
00:17:19:17 - 00:17:43:14
Massimo Trotta
And through that understanding, what is the level of stress? When does glucose or sucrose accumulate during the growth of plant during the day? And eventually you can if you look at glucose, that's one thing. But if you look at other chemicals like the absence of gas, it you know, when the water is too low for the plant and interact on the other side in the nano sites.
00:17:43:19 - 00:18:13:19
Massimo Trotta
So when you do have to do with bacteria, you can actually understand if you're a small pond, it's polluted with nose, heavy metals or recalcitrant pollutant molecules that do not like to be detected, but you want to detect and eventually destroy. So it's a nick already mentioned the dynamic portion of the interaction between plants and external environments, which is a trick to use.
00:18:13:19 - 00:18:17:00
Massimo Trotta
Plants has a new technological platform.
00:18:17:02 - 00:18:33:01
Abigail Acton
And I think also one time when we were talking, you mentioned the idea of a crosstalk between biological and non-biological matter. I really like that. But that concept, again, we're going back to the notion of talk communication, but the biological and non-biological matter, I think that's fascinating. The intersection between the two.
00:18:33:03 - 00:18:57:09
Massimo Trotta
Yes, it is. It is fascinating because it's a way of understanding a different language. Well, first of all, let me say biological systems do not like non-biological stuff. So if you go with a piece of steel and you get it close to two piezo 223, nothing will happen. If you hit it too hard, something will let that will happen to the tree, but there will be no connection.
00:18:57:09 - 00:19:24:18
Massimo Trotta
You have to have a translator between the plant and the non-biological stuff. And this translator is probably the most important piece of the entire hopefully project what kind of dictionary you have in your hands to understand plants and make the piece of steel understanding the language. And that's the conduction through polymers. I've heard Nico talking about polymers. I was fantastic interaction.
00:19:24:18 - 00:19:35:03
Massimo Trotta
Polymers are like pieces of plastic, but these are able to conduct electrons. And so the perfect way of crossing between the two words.
00:19:35:05 - 00:19:38:05
Abigail Acton
Yeah, it's like opening up. Opening up new horizons.
00:19:38:05 - 00:19:38:13
Abigail Acton
Really?
00:19:38:13 - 00:19:39:21
Massimo Trotta
Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
00:19:39:21 - 00:19:47:17
Abigail Acton
Fantastic. Thank you very much. It sounds very interesting research, there. So do we have any questions at all for Massimo? Yeah. Nico would you have a question?
00:19:47:19 - 00:20:14:10
Nico Bruns
You mentioned they're conducting polymers, which of course are close to my heart and my expertise. But how do you get the plans or the microbes to then communicate electronically with the conducting polymers because they're coming back to polymers can be considered you a plastic wire. So they contain the electrons once it's in there. But how do you actually bridge this interface between the biological side and then the polymers?
00:20:14:12 - 00:20:41:01
Massimo Trotta
Well, the idea came from a lady 78. She was the the person who thought this. The idea is that polymers are made of monomers. If you give monomers to the plants exactly as you give green color to the plants on St Patrick's Day, the plant will are the color of the of the polymer because the plants will use its redox capability.
00:20:41:01 - 00:21:12:00
Massimo Trotta
So the ability of exchanging electrons with the monomer to make the polymer through the veins of the plant. And that was really fascinating seeing that you can actually do it. You give the monument and the polymer, it's built within the cradle of the plant and conducts electrons when the light is shown to be on the plant. Similarly, on cyanobacteria and on photosynthetic oxygen, it's a real twist of the scenario.
00:21:12:05 - 00:21:22:18
Massimo Trotta
You're going to have to stuff the polymer by pushing it, which it's just let them do it. So a very talented think be done by somebody else.
00:21:22:20 - 00:21:34:00
Abigail Acton
Let the plant take control. Yeah, but the plant they control so it absorbs it does it then Masimo it absorbs it in a in a sort of natural way, like it would absorb other other elements and things around it.
00:21:34:02 - 00:21:36:12
Massimo Trotta
Yeah. Of course you cannot say it's natural because.
00:21:36:18 - 00:21:37:14
Abigail Acton
You're introducing.
00:21:37:14 - 00:21:38:00
Massimo Trotta
The green.
00:21:38:06 - 00:21:39:07
Abigail Acton
Like light.
00:21:39:07 - 00:22:00:14
Massimo Trotta
But it's close to that. Yes. Yes. And as long as you choose the right molecules, you're armless to the plant or to the back to you. But as you would say, it's a puzzle which is the right model. Those are the molecules can be found in its monomeric aspect, but may not be as a polymer or vice versa.
00:22:00:16 - 00:22:07:02
Massimo Trotta
So it's a puzzle and you need a lot of trial and error and a lot of.
00:22:07:04 - 00:22:17:08
Abigail Acton
So that's always helpful, a lot of effort to do that, to do that, to do the prodding around. Very good. Thank you very much. Okay, Lucia, would you have any questions?
00:22:17:10 - 00:22:47:15
Lucia Beccai
And it's really, really, really amazing all the, you know, plant world cool stuff is actually being taken also as inspiration by some roboticists to build robots that can move now, like like plants in particular by Mazzola. So she actually is the one we introduced to the plant as a model in robotics to have soft robots that can move by growing.
00:22:47:17 - 00:23:10:07
Lucia Beccai
So this is a totally new concept. So I think that there are there are so many things out there and people have just, you know, I just this is just at the beginning. So it is nice to hear a lot of developments from the mature point of view because that's really the building blocks in order to have these new kinds of soft robotics implementations.
00:23:10:09 - 00:23:28:16
Abigail Acton
Okay. Well, thank you very much, Massimo. I'm going to turn to Luciano. Luciano, what does an elephant trunk and a robot have in common? At the moment, that question remains hard to answer, but perhaps your work on the PROBOSCIS project can help us. I'd like to ask you, what is it about elephant trunks that attracted your attention?
00:23:28:18 - 00:23:52:18
Lucia Beccai
Well, you know, today an elephant trunk and a robot do not have anything in common. So this is what we would like to see. So it is the gap that we would like to fill in with our project. You know, elephants are really amazing animals. They are intelligent, sensitive, self-aware, and their proboscis, a trunk, is an organ that has an exceptional agility and cutting.
00:23:52:19 - 00:24:22:02
Lucia Beccai
And in earlier work, it seems like the trunk is an independent organ from the rest of the animal. So it's a very versatile organ. It can perform a multitude of tasks in different environments like dry or wet environments. They can reach a wide space and in particular perform both strong and delicate tasks and also very precise because they can grip like single and multiple objects of diverse dimensions, shape, stiffness, also granular material.
00:24:22:04 - 00:24:50:21
Lucia Beccai
So race hands, who knows our gripper, artificial gripper, Who can do all this today? So, you know, the trunk really helps the elephant to explore the world. And it's really a truly universal manipulator, natural manipulator that is based on some very particular characteristics. First of all, it is a continuum structure. So it doesn't have any joints. No section doesn't have a distinction between the arm and the gripper.
00:24:50:23 - 00:25:04:11
Lucia Beccai
It's soft and is strong. So it is what is called a muscular hydrostatic. So it is a structure that consists mainly of muscles with no skeletal support. It is highly perceptive.
00:25:04:17 - 00:25:29:01
Abigail Acton
So, yes, it seems absolutely clear that the the elephant trunk is a stunning example of nature working at its at its most diverse best. And I can see the features that would attract you for robotics. But could you explain a little bit more closely how that could be applied to to robotics practically? So how would you actually go about trying to learn from that and to have a a mirror of that for your robotic systems?
00:25:29:03 - 00:25:55:18
Lucia Beccai
Well, actually, what we are trying to do is that we are trying to identify some new design principles for developing robotic manipulators that are guided by touch and that are highly versatile. Okay, so these two aspects, guided by touch and highly versatile, are the the major aspects of our work. So regarding versatility, I think I already explained the model.
00:25:55:20 - 00:26:22:24
Lucia Beccai
Then of course I can speak about how to how we approach the artificial part regarding the touch. Actually what is really interesting is that the proboscis is really sensitive, but it has a really thick, rugged skin. Okay, so we are trying to understand how they manage to be target sensitive with this type of skin that no one has studied before.
00:26:23:01 - 00:26:46:15
Lucia Beccai
It is a skin which is very wrinkle and has high number of folds. But is clearly and it's involved in the sensory motor behavior of the trunk. So the elephant actually, what we know from behavioral studies of scientists studying the behavior of the elephants is that they are starting to see that the side vision is not prioritized in these animals.
00:26:46:17 - 00:26:57:14
Lucia Beccai
They navigate the world mainly by other senses, primarily smell, and then also, of course, here and touch when they interact with the environment.
00:26:57:16 - 00:27:10:19
Abigail Acton
So, Lucia, under the proposal is project then that was supported by the European Union. What is it that you are actually trying to do in the laboratory to to bounce off that idea, to be inspired by the trunk? What are you replicating, if I can use the word replicating?
00:27:10:21 - 00:27:44:19
Lucia Beccai
Well, the world replicating is not really a good one. Let's say that this project is a very strongly interdisciplinary effort because in addition to studying the anatomy and the behavior of the trunk in real experiments with objects, we actually are working at developing new soft robotics tools. What does this mean in soft robotics? For those who don't know, Actually, the physical properties and the body of the robot have the role, like in conventional rigid robotics they don't have.
00:27:44:21 - 00:28:04:07
Lucia Beccai
So it is very important to, let's say, includes intelligence in the morphology and in the materials of the robot. So in particular in our project, we are working at soft actuation and soft sensing, but also in integrating new control paradigms.
00:28:04:12 - 00:28:06:22
Abigail Acton
Okay, What do you mean by soft actuation?
00:28:06:24 - 00:28:48:04
Lucia Beccai
Soft actuation? It means that we are not speaking about motors. We are speaking about actuators that are made of soft materials with, for example, being driven by a pneumatic source, what they are called pneumatic artificial muscles. So muscles that can exert a force and can be guided by their fluidic. Okay. And so this means actually developing designs, architectures of these actuators that can perform in, let's say, more or less, okay, smoothly as the muscles let's.
00:28:48:04 - 00:29:02:15
Abigail Acton
Say, okay, so what's the benefit of that in comparison to a more traditional approach to robotics where one thinks of things that are quite rigid and simplistic almost in comparison, what's the what's the actual practical benefit of that kind of approach, the soft robotics approach?
00:29:02:17 - 00:29:52:07
Lucia Beccai
Yeah, well, the main benefit that we want to reach actually is actually a fully integrated approach. So we're not talking about the typical engineering systemic engineering approach in which my components are taken from the shelf and they are integrated. But actually this integration is from the bottom up. So a material that is also sensitive, for example, to attack those stimuli and that is part of the actuator and actuator that actually has an architecture that already integrates, let's say, and the intelligence of a typical kind of movement, for example, an actuator that not only elongates but because of its particular shape, it can both elongate and bend.
00:29:52:09 - 00:30:20:17
Lucia Beccai
Okay, so this kind of intelligence in the materials and in the architecture of the of the structure is such that can help us to build new machines that are more natural like and in which the control is simplified. So imagine actually, you know, the elephant trunk has more than 100,000 muscles, right? And so it doesn't make sense to mimic each one of these muscles.
00:30:20:17 - 00:30:38:20
Lucia Beccai
Right. So instead mimicking an architecture of this muscle, right. In a smart way so that both the materials and the structure of the whole architecture can and could so movements already without the need of a specific localized control.
00:30:38:22 - 00:30:53:17
Abigail Acton
Okay, fantastic. Thank you. Great. Okay, so we get the idea. We get a very clear idea of what it is that you have been inspired by and what your team is actually setting out to to achieve. Thank you very much for that, Lucia, Does anyone have any questions for Lucia about her work? Yeah Massimo.
00:30:53:17 - 00:31:18:04
Massimo Trotta
Yes, thank you. Yeah, it's very inspiring. I might have missed it, but one thing I did not get is how small is small? I mean, what is the lower end of this robotic approach? Can you make them as well? Can you think of them be as smaller as you wish, down to a level of the micro size dimension?
00:31:18:04 - 00:31:23:08
Massimo Trotta
Or is this something that you want to have it in a tangible dimension?
00:31:23:10 - 00:31:25:14
Lucia Beccai
You mean in soft robotics in general?
00:31:25:16 - 00:31:27:17
Massimo Trotta
Well, no, the trunk specifically.
00:31:27:18 - 00:31:39:21
Lucia Beccai
Well, the trunk we are aiming at dimensions that are not the real ones, but they are maybe, you know, 70% of say more or less. Okay, 70.
00:31:39:21 - 00:31:40:02
Abigail Acton
Percent.
00:31:40:02 - 00:31:43:17
Lucia Beccai
Smaller. No, no. In total, I mean, 30% smaller.
00:31:43:19 - 00:31:47:16
Abigail Acton
There you go. I see what you mean. 70% the size. Yeah. So a little bit smaller than a real elephant trunk.
00:31:47:18 - 00:32:23:22
Lucia Beccai
Yeah, a little bit smaller. So, Massimo, my question is really fit because you see there the bottlenecks, right? That we are having in technology because of course the main, let's say approach that we are using is 3D printing, and 3D printing actually has a certain volume of development. And so that is why this is a strongly disciplinary approach where there are people, researchers that are studying new materials and also a company that is studying, developing new 3D printers for these materials.
00:32:23:24 - 00:32:36:03
Abigail Acton
It sounds incredibly innovative. Yeah, it's really it's really at the cutting edge. Luciano It's really fascinating. That's fantastic. Well, thank you all very much for your time and thanks so much for explaining your incredibly innovative research.
00:32:36:03 - 00:32:36:22
Nico Bruns
Thanks, Abigail.
00:32:36:22 - 00:32:38:23
Lucia Beccai
Thank you again. Thank you, everyone.
00:32:39:00 - 00:32:42:00
Massimo Trotta
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having us. It was fantastic.
00:32:42:01 - 00:32:44:05
Abigail Acton
My very great pleasure. That was great fun.
00:32:44:05 - 00:32:46:18
Massimo Trotta
Thank you.
00:32:46:20 - 00:33:09:03
Abigail Acton
Are you interested in what other EU funded projects are doing to develop innovations that draw from nature? The Cordis website will give you an insight into the results of projects funded by the Horizon 2020 program that are working in this area. The website has articles and interviews that explore the results of research being conducted in a very broad range of domains and subjects, from cannibal pulsars to the personality of shrews.
00:33:09:03 - 00:33:33:01
Abigail Acton
There's something there for you. Maybe you're involved in a project or would simply like to apply for funding. Take a look at what others are doing in your domain. So come check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick. We're always happy to hear from you. Drop us a line. Editorial at cordis dot Europa dot EU until next time.
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:10:05 - 00:00:15:24
Abigail Acton
This is CORDIScovery.
00:00:16:01 - 00:00:41:08
Abigail Acton
Hello. Welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery with me, Abigail Acton. 100,000 starlings move in unison against an autumn sky. Not one collides. Fireflies light up a wood in Borneo, flashing in perfect synchronicity. Bacteria communicate around a plant's roots. Once the population reaches a certain number. While up in the air, the wings of an eastern amber wing dragonfly have 3000 sensory neurons, including flow sensors, to prevent a stall.
00:00:41:10 - 00:00:55:10
Abigail Acton
What can we learn about these marvels? What can we learn from them? Nature is a source of inspiration for artists and scientists alike. So how are our three guests exploring the fascinating world of bio inspired innovation?
00:00:55:12 - 00:01:16:07
Abigail Acton
Currently at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany, Nico Bruns leads the Sustainable Functional Polymers Research Group. The team is using bio inspired approaches to design, engineer and realized materials and nanosystems with unprecedented new functions. Nico is particularly interested in the properties of the polymer composites making up plant cuticles. Welcome, Nico.
00:01:16:09 - 00:01:18:24
Nico Bruns
Hello. Thanks a lot Abigail.
00:01:19:01 - 00:01:37:12
Abigail Acton
Massimo Trotta is based at the Italian National Council for Science in Bari. His research activity has always been connected to photosynthesis. More recently, the environmental applications of photosynthetic organisms have attracted his attention. Massimo is also involved in popularizing science for a non-specialist audience. Massimo, You're in the right place today. Hi.
00:01:37:14 - 00:01:40:24
Massimo Trotta
Hi. Nice being here. Thank you for inviting me.
00:01:41:01 - 00:01:57:04
Abigail Acton
Lucia Beccai is a senior researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa and the head of the Soft Bio Robotics Perception Lab. She is interested in tactile sensing for soft robotics and versatile grasping, and is particularly focused on what we can learn from elephant trunks. Hello, Lucia.
00:01:57:06 - 00:01:59:23
Lucia Beccai
Hello, Abigail and everyone. Glad to be here.
00:02:00:00 - 00:02:15:15
Abigail Acton
We're very glad to have you. Nicco, I'm going to turn to you first. Your project club, Matsu, was interested in identifying materials with novel properties, drawing on plants and the surfaces of petals and leaves. Can you tell us a little bit more about the various characteristics of leaves and petals and why those are of interest?
00:02:15:17 - 00:02:47:17
Nico Bruns
Well, the cuticle of of plants is the outermost layer. It is basically sitting on top of the cells of plant leaves and petals. So it's kind of the skin of the plant to the outside. And as our skin, it has a lot of different functions at to regulates water intake and water retention. So it's a it's a membrane sometimes and some plants that can even create structural color so that the clan plants get a certain hue and certain color changes.
00:02:47:19 - 00:03:10:09
Nico Bruns
And our it regulates what can attach to the plant and what not. So if you think of either thinks that should it have like bees that attach to the petals or things that should not attach like predators, like small insects that eat up the plants. And of course the plants have created surfaces that are so structured that they can stick or maybe fall off.
00:03:10:11 - 00:03:28:19
Abigail Acton
so there's a huge diversity of surfaces that they have and motivations for efficiency motivations or reasons for those surfaces existence. So how on earth did you go about replicating these in the lab? What what what approach did you have to trying to develop your own version of these various surfaces? And which ones were you most interested in?
00:03:28:19 - 00:03:29:04
Abigail Acton
Naturally.
00:03:29:06 - 00:03:55:03
Nico Bruns
So the way to approach bio inspired materials research is to look at nature and try to identify the working principles behind this. You know, the functions that nature offers and then replicate this not necessarily with the same materials and the same same building blocks that nature uses. But, you know, taking advantage of all the other nice materials that we chemists can produce and apply.
00:03:55:05 - 00:04:24:20
Nico Bruns
So therefore, we look at nature, we look at how nature try to solve some, let's say, engineering problems and then engineer our own materials that replicate this in the European project format. So we have a couple of super interesting projects. One was, for example, to replicate the structural color found in plant petals and as a result, a group in Cambridge created glitter.
00:04:24:20 - 00:04:38:11
Nico Bruns
So things that you can add into, into cosmetics, but it's not based on plastics, but in this case on cellulose. And the color just appears because of the arrangement of the cellulose molecules in these in these flakes.
00:04:38:13 - 00:04:49:15
Abigail Acton
And so the arrangement of the cellulose molecules in the flakes replicates or is an echo of the way that the cellulose molecules are arranged in the in the iridescent plants.
00:04:49:15 - 00:04:50:07
Nico Bruns
Yes, indeed.
00:04:50:08 - 00:05:08:04
Abigail Acton
So you see how the iridescence occurs in the plants and then you create a mirror or an echo of that in the oak. And so obviously that's going to be much more environmentally friendly. But what other attributes does this have? What other uses can these have? Generally? Not necessarily the iridescence, for example.
00:05:08:05 - 00:05:33:07
Nico Bruns
Another very fascinating example from the research consortium is to look at the structure of the plant leaves the plant petals and see how insects. So potato beetles actually can stick on them. So the colleagues did experiments where they put little a little hair onto a potato people and then let it crawl on the surface and measure the forces that these little beetles can can exert.
00:05:33:09 - 00:06:04:18
Nico Bruns
And then they exchanged the real leaves with with replicas first, basically just kind of a replica molded ultimately. And then they went on and created artificial surfaces with the same type of wrinkling structures. So where these beetles again start to slip. The idea being at some point to have like an nonstick coating that you can basically coat onto onto plants in order to avoid that these these beetles or other people crawl up the plants.
00:06:04:20 - 00:06:24:06
Abigail Acton
And that's obviously brilliant. And so basically you're taking a solution that the air that the plant is found in and actually may be offering it to other plants as a sort of a non-chemical pesticide, basically a prevention. That's excellent. Superb. And and I think that you were also interested in certain proteins. Can you tell us a little bit about more about the proteins that you were interested in?
00:06:24:08 - 00:06:51:04
Nico Bruns
In my own research group, we are interested in how to combine proteins as building blocks from nature with synthetic materials, with polymers and plastics. And particularly in this project, we looked at a way to coat surfaces that are that need to be lubricate. You know, think of of small moving pieces in in let's say a mechanical watch or any any type of instrument that has mechanical moving parts.
00:06:51:06 - 00:07:22:16
Nico Bruns
And there you need to have what is called a lifelong lubrication because you're not going to put oil there every every couple of months. And then it's gone, like in your bicycle chain or something. But these are encapsulated systems with special lubricating liquids. And one task is to keep the liquid at the side where it should remain. And in order to solve that, we turned to two proteins and to a balanced approach where we basically took proteins that like to stick to surfaces and change their wetting behavior of the surface.
00:07:22:16 - 00:07:30:23
Nico Bruns
For these lubrication oils so that the lubrication drop then remained sitting at the defined position.
00:07:31:00 - 00:07:41:20
Abigail Acton
Stays in place. That sounds hugely challenging and it, I don't know, just from a completely non expert perspective, it must involve an awful lot of trial and error, but it also sounds like puzzle solving.
00:07:41:22 - 00:07:49:00
Nico Bruns
As any science. It's always, you know, if you do like to play with things and try out things, then you're right in the.
00:07:49:02 - 00:08:04:20
Abigail Acton
Yes. Yes, indeed. Wonderful. Thank you very much. And so, Niko, just thinking about the future, I mean, not necessarily just your work, but globally, where do you see bio inspired innovation that draws on plants and the richness that plants can offer? Where do you see that going? What do you think's down the pipeline?
00:08:04:22 - 00:08:33:06
Nico Bruns
Well, one thing that we also as a research team want to address in the future is to see where we can adapt to adapting parts of the plants. Yeah. So plants to adapt to to their environment, but usually relatively slowly they grow. And so this is not fast movement at long lasting kind of slow movement and adaptation and this kind of self adapting materials there.
00:08:33:09 - 00:09:00:10
Nico Bruns
There exists a lot of concepts already in the scientific literature, but you can learn a lot from nature how nature solves this and for example, adapts the surface while it expands and while the plant grows, or in response to different levels of humidity on the outside or, you know, plant hairs that that are on a surface and then raise up and lay down, providing a bit of shading, adaptable shading.
00:09:00:12 - 00:09:20:15
Nico Bruns
So all these this question of a more dynamic, if a plant can be dynamic, yeah, that's these aspects are questions that that we think have a lot of potential in order to provide technological solutions that might be more environmentally friendly and just produce cool materials that can do things.
00:09:20:16 - 00:09:28:08
Abigail Acton
Cool materials are always a good thing to have all of them producing cool materials. Excellent. Thank you so much. Nico does anyone have any questions or observations?
00:09:28:13 - 00:09:59:24
Lucia Beccai
Yes, I do have one. This is Lucia and amazing research, Nico, that you are doing. And so my question is about your controlling actually the the kind of the lubricant and all that you can obtain by synthesizing your materials. And do you think this works also the inverse? I mean, could you also control the lack of sort of slippery, let's say, condition on a surface?
00:10:00:01 - 00:10:13:10
Lucia Beccai
I see this because this would be really amazing interest in robotics, in making surfaces that in grippers, for example, can adapt or not to objects.
00:10:13:12 - 00:10:17:05
Abigail Acton
That's an excellent question. Yeah, that's a really cool question. Yes, Nico.
00:10:17:07 - 00:10:21:02
Nico Bruns
So basically, to create structures that are sticky on the mat.
00:10:21:04 - 00:10:24:02
Lucia Beccai
Yes, it's a hard question. But to me.
00:10:24:08 - 00:10:57:07
Nico Bruns
Then no, no, it's in general that that is of course possible because as a polymer chemist we know which which polymers, which macromolecules are stickier microscopically. And there are a lot of polymers that where you can actually switch behavior depending on temperature. For example, small temperature changes that make a gel collapse and then to become completely different. So yeah, in principle, yes, it should.
00:10:57:09 - 00:10:58:09
Nico Bruns
That should work.
00:10:58:11 - 00:11:25:11
Abigail Acton
It's interesting to see the consider the overlap between between the notion of robotics and and biomimicry when it comes to surfaces because of course with gripping that's a it's a central feature. I'm thinking of geckos immediately but yeah. Excellent. Thank you very much for that question. Actually, I'm just going to turn to Massimo now. Massimo. Hi. For your project set out to explore the boundary between technology and nature, looking at bio hybrid systems based on photosynthetic organisms and smart materials and devices.
00:11:25:11 - 00:11:41:15
Abigail Acton
So you were looking at the at the bridge between what we produce and what nature produces, and I think that's really interesting. So can you tell us a little bit more about your fascination with photosynthesis and why you moved away from the idea of trying to mimic it, to harnessing it instead?
00:11:41:17 - 00:12:10:15
Massimo Trotta
Well, I think the main idea comes from the fact that you do not want to replicate whatever is in nature in your laboratory, because the chances that you can replicate billions of years of evolution are very slim. So if I may say, my fascination comes from scientific literature meeting, discussion with colleagues, but most of all from beer. Yeah, that's that's really important because.
00:12:10:18 - 00:12:11:15
Abigail Acton
Bio inspired in fact.
00:12:11:15 - 00:12:36:19
Massimo Trotta
Bio-inspired if you can make yeasts to produce almost any color or any taste of beer why cannot be thinking of harnessing photosynthetic systems to give us energy as much as you do for a beer. So if you can't beat them, join them. That's my way of thinking.
00:12:36:21 - 00:12:43:06
Abigail Acton
That's an excellent principle. So your project, were you what were you actually setting out to to look at? What were you considering?
00:12:43:08 - 00:13:15:11
Massimo Trotta
We were considering a completely new way of making the interaction within a device. With every kind of device you have with this biological systems. And the think is that biological systems are not designed by nature to interact with devices. This thinks is the main drawback. When you think of a biological system, there has to work for us. So if you want really convinced is well convinced it's almost humanized plants.
00:13:15:11 - 00:13:46:21
Massimo Trotta
But if you really want to harness this biological system, then you have to use to be gentle. You have to not be dangerous for a day surviving. And and this entire system is based on using molecules, namely conductive polymers, to interact with the plants or the algae or the micro-organisms in such a way that they will be willing to interact without giving up and moving somewhere else and not on the device.
00:13:46:21 - 00:13:47:19
Massimo Trotta
We want them to grow.
00:13:47:19 - 00:13:48:24
Abigail Acton
Or dying even.
00:13:48:24 - 00:13:50:09
Massimo Trotta
Yeah, Or even dying.
00:13:50:12 - 00:14:12:10
Abigail Acton
Yeah. So. So you use something that is minimally invasive and is made up of polymers so that the the organism in question accepts it and tolerates it more. Why? I mean, what are you actually hoping to find out? What are you hoping to establish? You mentioned, for example, bacteria. I believe they're what what are you hoping that that will show you?
00:14:12:12 - 00:14:49:01
Massimo Trotta
Well, there are a few things that can be shown. Well, let me say one thing is important. Size matters here. If you want to interact with a tree, then you have to go to micro dimension. If you want to interact with the bacteria, you have to go to nano. Of course, the toothpicks are very different. If you want to make a hole through the bark or through the particular of any leaf, then you have to have stirred in our system, which though does not make any harm to the leaf or to the bark.
00:14:49:03 - 00:15:21:08
Massimo Trotta
And you can do that. You can actually do that, but you cannot get electrons out and electrons are what you need. Electrons are a way of responding to a stimulation and stimuli from external changes. Once you read electrons, you're fine. And how you do that, covering your very sturdy material with polymer that conduct electrons similarly to how metals do, but in a way that is fine for the plant or for the leaf.
00:15:21:08 - 00:15:30:16
Abigail Acton
Right? So you are conducting your electrons, but what does that do? How does that what does that show you or what do you hope to do? What do you hope to achieve with that conductivity you know.
00:15:30:18 - 00:15:58:23
Massimo Trotta
There are everything you can get the state of dehydration, of the tree, and then answer to that by watering the plant at the right moment, at the right time. So it can be a very useful task for beating rough. So it is a way of optimizing agriculture in a way or you can look for a specific response to specific molecules.
00:15:59:00 - 00:16:28:06
Massimo Trotta
Next Sugars. Definitely. What is the amount of this sugar Do we need to shade or have different kind of action from the man who is growing that the avocado plant or whatever? So the idea is to interact continuously with these kind of systems all on a nano sides, to have this connection so well designed that the bugs are really willing to give up electrons and they would do the same on the nanoscale.
00:16:28:11 - 00:16:33:06
Abigail Acton
So it's almost as if you can talk to the plant or the animal that you are, you are connecting with.
00:16:33:08 - 00:16:47:01
Massimo Trotta
In a way. In a way you are, you might, you may communicate. Electrons are the language. It's not English, but that's a fantastic way of saying it. You communicate, you are electrons, lovely.
00:16:47:02 - 00:16:51:09
Abigail Acton
And so what did you find in your project? What did you achieve?
00:16:51:11 - 00:17:19:15
Massimo Trotta
it's it's very interesting. At this moment we were able to obtain the variation. For example, Elaine is established and her group in Linköping with the group in Umea were able to, to find a way to detect the amount of glucose in sucrose within the clay, which is one of the a small channel that runs through the plant to conduct water chemical and other stuff.
00:17:19:17 - 00:17:43:14
Massimo Trotta
And through that understanding, what is the level of stress? When does glucose or sucrose accumulate during the growth of plant during the day? And eventually you can if you look at glucose, that's one thing. But if you look at other chemicals like the absence of gas, it you know, when the water is too low for the plant and interact on the other side in the nano sites.
00:17:43:19 - 00:18:13:19
Massimo Trotta
So when you do have to do with bacteria, you can actually understand if you're a small pond, it's polluted with nose, heavy metals or recalcitrant pollutant molecules that do not like to be detected, but you want to detect and eventually destroy. So it's a nick already mentioned the dynamic portion of the interaction between plants and external environments, which is a trick to use.
00:18:13:19 - 00:18:17:00
Massimo Trotta
Plants has a new technological platform.
00:18:17:02 - 00:18:33:01
Abigail Acton
And I think also one time when we were talking, you mentioned the idea of a crosstalk between biological and non-biological matter. I really like that. But that concept, again, we're going back to the notion of talk communication, but the biological and non-biological matter, I think that's fascinating. The intersection between the two.
00:18:33:03 - 00:18:57:09
Massimo Trotta
Yes, it is. It is fascinating because it's a way of understanding a different language. Well, first of all, let me say biological systems do not like non-biological stuff. So if you go with a piece of steel and you get it close to two piezo 223, nothing will happen. If you hit it too hard, something will let that will happen to the tree, but there will be no connection.
00:18:57:09 - 00:19:24:18
Massimo Trotta
You have to have a translator between the plant and the non-biological stuff. And this translator is probably the most important piece of the entire hopefully project what kind of dictionary you have in your hands to understand plants and make the piece of steel understanding the language. And that's the conduction through polymers. I've heard Nico talking about polymers. I was fantastic interaction.
00:19:24:18 - 00:19:35:03
Massimo Trotta
Polymers are like pieces of plastic, but these are able to conduct electrons. And so the perfect way of crossing between the two words.
00:19:35:05 - 00:19:38:05
Abigail Acton
Yeah, it's like opening up. Opening up new horizons.
00:19:38:05 - 00:19:38:13
Abigail Acton
Really?
00:19:38:13 - 00:19:39:21
Massimo Trotta
Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
00:19:39:21 - 00:19:47:17
Abigail Acton
Fantastic. Thank you very much. It sounds very interesting research, there. So do we have any questions at all for Massimo? Yeah. Nico would you have a question?
00:19:47:19 - 00:20:14:10
Nico Bruns
You mentioned they're conducting polymers, which of course are close to my heart and my expertise. But how do you get the plans or the microbes to then communicate electronically with the conducting polymers because they're coming back to polymers can be considered you a plastic wire. So they contain the electrons once it's in there. But how do you actually bridge this interface between the biological side and then the polymers?
00:20:14:12 - 00:20:41:01
Massimo Trotta
Well, the idea came from a lady 78. She was the the person who thought this. The idea is that polymers are made of monomers. If you give monomers to the plants exactly as you give green color to the plants on St Patrick's Day, the plant will are the color of the of the polymer because the plants will use its redox capability.
00:20:41:01 - 00:21:12:00
Massimo Trotta
So the ability of exchanging electrons with the monomer to make the polymer through the veins of the plant. And that was really fascinating seeing that you can actually do it. You give the monument and the polymer, it's built within the cradle of the plant and conducts electrons when the light is shown to be on the plant. Similarly, on cyanobacteria and on photosynthetic oxygen, it's a real twist of the scenario.
00:21:12:05 - 00:21:22:18
Massimo Trotta
You're going to have to stuff the polymer by pushing it, which it's just let them do it. So a very talented think be done by somebody else.
00:21:22:20 - 00:21:34:00
Abigail Acton
Let the plant take control. Yeah, but the plant they control so it absorbs it does it then Masimo it absorbs it in a in a sort of natural way, like it would absorb other other elements and things around it.
00:21:34:02 - 00:21:36:12
Massimo Trotta
Yeah. Of course you cannot say it's natural because.
00:21:36:18 - 00:21:37:14
Abigail Acton
You're introducing.
00:21:37:14 - 00:21:38:00
Massimo Trotta
The green.
00:21:38:06 - 00:21:39:07
Abigail Acton
Like light.
00:21:39:07 - 00:22:00:14
Massimo Trotta
But it's close to that. Yes. Yes. And as long as you choose the right molecules, you're armless to the plant or to the back to you. But as you would say, it's a puzzle which is the right model. Those are the molecules can be found in its monomeric aspect, but may not be as a polymer or vice versa.
00:22:00:16 - 00:22:07:02
Massimo Trotta
So it's a puzzle and you need a lot of trial and error and a lot of.
00:22:07:04 - 00:22:17:08
Abigail Acton
So that's always helpful, a lot of effort to do that, to do that, to do the prodding around. Very good. Thank you very much. Okay, Lucia, would you have any questions?
00:22:17:10 - 00:22:47:15
Lucia Beccai
And it's really, really, really amazing all the, you know, plant world cool stuff is actually being taken also as inspiration by some roboticists to build robots that can move now, like like plants in particular by Mazzola. So she actually is the one we introduced to the plant as a model in robotics to have soft robots that can move by growing.
00:22:47:17 - 00:23:10:07
Lucia Beccai
So this is a totally new concept. So I think that there are there are so many things out there and people have just, you know, I just this is just at the beginning. So it is nice to hear a lot of developments from the mature point of view because that's really the building blocks in order to have these new kinds of soft robotics implementations.
00:23:10:09 - 00:23:28:16
Abigail Acton
Okay. Well, thank you very much, Massimo. I'm going to turn to Luciano. Luciano, what does an elephant trunk and a robot have in common? At the moment, that question remains hard to answer, but perhaps your work on the PROBOSCIS project can help us. I'd like to ask you, what is it about elephant trunks that attracted your attention?
00:23:28:18 - 00:23:52:18
Lucia Beccai
Well, you know, today an elephant trunk and a robot do not have anything in common. So this is what we would like to see. So it is the gap that we would like to fill in with our project. You know, elephants are really amazing animals. They are intelligent, sensitive, self-aware, and their proboscis, a trunk, is an organ that has an exceptional agility and cutting.
00:23:52:19 - 00:24:22:02
Lucia Beccai
And in earlier work, it seems like the trunk is an independent organ from the rest of the animal. So it's a very versatile organ. It can perform a multitude of tasks in different environments like dry or wet environments. They can reach a wide space and in particular perform both strong and delicate tasks and also very precise because they can grip like single and multiple objects of diverse dimensions, shape, stiffness, also granular material.
00:24:22:04 - 00:24:50:21
Lucia Beccai
So race hands, who knows our gripper, artificial gripper, Who can do all this today? So, you know, the trunk really helps the elephant to explore the world. And it's really a truly universal manipulator, natural manipulator that is based on some very particular characteristics. First of all, it is a continuum structure. So it doesn't have any joints. No section doesn't have a distinction between the arm and the gripper.
00:24:50:23 - 00:25:04:11
Lucia Beccai
It's soft and is strong. So it is what is called a muscular hydrostatic. So it is a structure that consists mainly of muscles with no skeletal support. It is highly perceptive.
00:25:04:17 - 00:25:29:01
Abigail Acton
So, yes, it seems absolutely clear that the the elephant trunk is a stunning example of nature working at its at its most diverse best. And I can see the features that would attract you for robotics. But could you explain a little bit more closely how that could be applied to to robotics practically? So how would you actually go about trying to learn from that and to have a a mirror of that for your robotic systems?
00:25:29:03 - 00:25:55:18
Lucia Beccai
Well, actually, what we are trying to do is that we are trying to identify some new design principles for developing robotic manipulators that are guided by touch and that are highly versatile. Okay, so these two aspects, guided by touch and highly versatile, are the the major aspects of our work. So regarding versatility, I think I already explained the model.
00:25:55:20 - 00:26:22:24
Lucia Beccai
Then of course I can speak about how to how we approach the artificial part regarding the touch. Actually what is really interesting is that the proboscis is really sensitive, but it has a really thick, rugged skin. Okay, so we are trying to understand how they manage to be target sensitive with this type of skin that no one has studied before.
00:26:23:01 - 00:26:46:15
Lucia Beccai
It is a skin which is very wrinkle and has high number of folds. But is clearly and it's involved in the sensory motor behavior of the trunk. So the elephant actually, what we know from behavioral studies of scientists studying the behavior of the elephants is that they are starting to see that the side vision is not prioritized in these animals.
00:26:46:17 - 00:26:57:14
Lucia Beccai
They navigate the world mainly by other senses, primarily smell, and then also, of course, here and touch when they interact with the environment.
00:26:57:16 - 00:27:10:19
Abigail Acton
So, Lucia, under the proposal is project then that was supported by the European Union. What is it that you are actually trying to do in the laboratory to to bounce off that idea, to be inspired by the trunk? What are you replicating, if I can use the word replicating?
00:27:10:21 - 00:27:44:19
Lucia Beccai
Well, the world replicating is not really a good one. Let's say that this project is a very strongly interdisciplinary effort because in addition to studying the anatomy and the behavior of the trunk in real experiments with objects, we actually are working at developing new soft robotics tools. What does this mean in soft robotics? For those who don't know, Actually, the physical properties and the body of the robot have the role, like in conventional rigid robotics they don't have.
00:27:44:21 - 00:28:04:07
Lucia Beccai
So it is very important to, let's say, includes intelligence in the morphology and in the materials of the robot. So in particular in our project, we are working at soft actuation and soft sensing, but also in integrating new control paradigms.
00:28:04:12 - 00:28:06:22
Abigail Acton
Okay, What do you mean by soft actuation?
00:28:06:24 - 00:28:48:04
Lucia Beccai
Soft actuation? It means that we are not speaking about motors. We are speaking about actuators that are made of soft materials with, for example, being driven by a pneumatic source, what they are called pneumatic artificial muscles. So muscles that can exert a force and can be guided by their fluidic. Okay. And so this means actually developing designs, architectures of these actuators that can perform in, let's say, more or less, okay, smoothly as the muscles let's.
00:28:48:04 - 00:29:02:15
Abigail Acton
Say, okay, so what's the benefit of that in comparison to a more traditional approach to robotics where one thinks of things that are quite rigid and simplistic almost in comparison, what's the what's the actual practical benefit of that kind of approach, the soft robotics approach?
00:29:02:17 - 00:29:52:07
Lucia Beccai
Yeah, well, the main benefit that we want to reach actually is actually a fully integrated approach. So we're not talking about the typical engineering systemic engineering approach in which my components are taken from the shelf and they are integrated. But actually this integration is from the bottom up. So a material that is also sensitive, for example, to attack those stimuli and that is part of the actuator and actuator that actually has an architecture that already integrates, let's say, and the intelligence of a typical kind of movement, for example, an actuator that not only elongates but because of its particular shape, it can both elongate and bend.
00:29:52:09 - 00:30:20:17
Lucia Beccai
Okay, so this kind of intelligence in the materials and in the architecture of the of the structure is such that can help us to build new machines that are more natural like and in which the control is simplified. So imagine actually, you know, the elephant trunk has more than 100,000 muscles, right? And so it doesn't make sense to mimic each one of these muscles.
00:30:20:17 - 00:30:38:20
Lucia Beccai
Right. So instead mimicking an architecture of this muscle, right. In a smart way so that both the materials and the structure of the whole architecture can and could so movements already without the need of a specific localized control.
00:30:38:22 - 00:30:53:17
Abigail Acton
Okay, fantastic. Thank you. Great. Okay, so we get the idea. We get a very clear idea of what it is that you have been inspired by and what your team is actually setting out to to achieve. Thank you very much for that, Lucia, Does anyone have any questions for Lucia about her work? Yeah Massimo.
00:30:53:17 - 00:31:18:04
Massimo Trotta
Yes, thank you. Yeah, it's very inspiring. I might have missed it, but one thing I did not get is how small is small? I mean, what is the lower end of this robotic approach? Can you make them as well? Can you think of them be as smaller as you wish, down to a level of the micro size dimension?
00:31:18:04 - 00:31:23:08
Massimo Trotta
Or is this something that you want to have it in a tangible dimension?
00:31:23:10 - 00:31:25:14
Lucia Beccai
You mean in soft robotics in general?
00:31:25:16 - 00:31:27:17
Massimo Trotta
Well, no, the trunk specifically.
00:31:27:18 - 00:31:39:21
Lucia Beccai
Well, the trunk we are aiming at dimensions that are not the real ones, but they are maybe, you know, 70% of say more or less. Okay, 70.
00:31:39:21 - 00:31:40:02
Abigail Acton
Percent.
00:31:40:02 - 00:31:43:17
Lucia Beccai
Smaller. No, no. In total, I mean, 30% smaller.
00:31:43:19 - 00:31:47:16
Abigail Acton
There you go. I see what you mean. 70% the size. Yeah. So a little bit smaller than a real elephant trunk.
00:31:47:18 - 00:32:23:22
Lucia Beccai
Yeah, a little bit smaller. So, Massimo, my question is really fit because you see there the bottlenecks, right? That we are having in technology because of course the main, let's say approach that we are using is 3D printing, and 3D printing actually has a certain volume of development. And so that is why this is a strongly disciplinary approach where there are people, researchers that are studying new materials and also a company that is studying, developing new 3D printers for these materials.
00:32:23:24 - 00:32:36:03
Abigail Acton
It sounds incredibly innovative. Yeah, it's really it's really at the cutting edge. Luciano It's really fascinating. That's fantastic. Well, thank you all very much for your time and thanks so much for explaining your incredibly innovative research.
00:32:36:03 - 00:32:36:22
Nico Bruns
Thanks, Abigail.
00:32:36:22 - 00:32:38:23
Lucia Beccai
Thank you again. Thank you, everyone.
00:32:39:00 - 00:32:42:00
Massimo Trotta
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having us. It was fantastic.
00:32:42:01 - 00:32:44:05
Abigail Acton
My very great pleasure. That was great fun.
00:32:44:05 - 00:32:46:18
Massimo Trotta
Thank you.
00:32:46:20 - 00:33:09:03
Abigail Acton
Are you interested in what other EU funded projects are doing to develop innovations that draw from nature? The Cordis website will give you an insight into the results of projects funded by the Horizon 2020 program that are working in this area. The website has articles and interviews that explore the results of research being conducted in a very broad range of domains and subjects, from cannibal pulsars to the personality of shrews.
00:33:09:03 - 00:33:33:01
Abigail Acton
There's something there for you. Maybe you're involved in a project or would simply like to apply for funding. Take a look at what others are doing in your domain. So come check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick. We're always happy to hear from you. Drop us a line. Editorial at cordis dot Europa dot EU until next time.
Insights and ideas
100 000 starlings move in unison against an autumn sky – not one collides; fireflies light up a wood in Borneo flashing in perfect synchronicity; bacteria communicate around a plant’s roots once the population reaches a certain number while, up in the air, the wings of an eastern amberwing dragonfly have 3 000 sensory neurons, including flow sensors to prevent a stall. What can we learn from these marvels? Nature has a vast array of biological solutions, and some of those that may inspire future trends are set out in a recently published paper in the journal ‘Frontiers in Physics’. How are our three guests exploring the fascinating world of bio-inspired innovation? Currently at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Nico Bruns leads the Sustainable Functional Polymers Research Group. The team is using bio-inspired approaches to design, engineer and develop materials, and nano-systems, with unprecedented new functions. Nico is particularly interested in the properties of the polymer composites making up plant cuticles, which he explored during the Horizon 2020 project, PlaMatSu. Massimo Trotta is based at the Italian National Research Council, in Bari. He has always been interested in photosynthesis; more recently, the environmental applications of photosynthetic organisms have attracted his attention. Massimo, who coordinated the HyPhOE project, is also involved in popularising science for a non-specialised audience. Lucia Beccai is a senior researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, and the head of the Soft Bio Robotics Perception Lab. She is interested in tactile sensing for soft robotics and versatile grasping and is particularly focused on what we can learn from elephant trunks, work which was partially funded under the EU’s PROBOSCIS project.
Happy to hear from you!
If you have any feedback, we’re always happy to hear from you! Send us any comments, questions or suggestions (but hopefully never a complaint!) to the usual email address, editorial@cordis.europa.eu.
Keywords
CORDIScovery, CORDIS, PlaMatSu, HyPhOE, PROBOSCIS, bio-inspired, innovation, solutions, robotics, plants, polymer composites, photosynthesis, tactile sensing, soft robotics