Descrizione del progetto
Far crescere i robot come piante
Le piante rappresentano una fonte di ispirazione sottovalutata. Si inerpicano e si espandono orizzontalmente usando tecniche sorprendenti. Utilizzano appositamente soluzioni molto complesse per adattarsi all’ambiente esterno e crescere in modo efficiente nei modi più efficaci. Ma i loro sistemi restano inesplorati. Il progetto GrowBot, finanziato dall’UE, intende essere pioniere nell’apprendere dalle piante, per creare un paradigma di movimento rivoluzionario nella robotica e nelle tecnologie dell’informazione e della comunicazione. Nello specifico, si studieranno capacità simili a quelle delle piante che crescono spostandosi, ovvero la capacità di ancorarsi, negoziare gli spazi vuoti e in generale arrampicarsi, per sostituire le ruote, le gambe o le rotaie degli attuali robot rampicanti, evitando che rimangano bloccati o cadano. La traduzione di tali funzioni nei processi di produzione all’interno dei robot promuoverà l’innovazione europea negli ecosistemi high-tech.
Obiettivo
GrowBot proposes a disruptively new paradigm of movement in robotics inspired by the moving-by-growing abilities of climbing plants.
Plants are still a quite unexplored model in robotics and ICT technologies, as their sessile nature leads to think that they do not move. Instead, they move greatly, on a different time scale, purposively, effectively and efficiently. To move from one point to another, plants must grow and continuously adapt their body to the external environmental conditions. This continuous growth is particularly evident in climbing plants.
By imitating them, the GrowBot objective is to develop low-mass and low-volume robots capable of anchoring themselves, negotiating voids, and more generally climbing, where current climbing robots based on wheels, legs, or rails would get stuck or fall. Specifically, the ability to grow will be translated by additive manufacturing processes inside the robot, which creates its body by depositing new materials with multi-functional properties, on the basis of the perceived external stimuli (without a pre-defined design). Energy efficiency will be intrinsic to such approach, but novel bio-hybrid energy harvesting solutions will be also implemented to generate energy by interfacing soft technologies with real plants. Perception and behavior will be based on the adaptive strategies that allow climbing plants to explore the environment, described mathematically after experimental observations.
GrowBot would contribute to consolidate this ground-breaking and pioneering research area on plant-inspired robotics that, although still in its infancy, can represent a revolutionary approach in robotics, as it has already happened with plant-inspired solutions in material science. GrowBot is based on a strongly interdisciplinary character and can open the way for a new technological paradigm around the concept of growing robots, fostering a European innovation eco-system for several high-tech sectors.
Campo scientifico
Programma(i)
Invito a presentare proposte
Vedi altri progetti per questo bandoBando secondario
H2020-FETPROACT-2018-01
Meccanismo di finanziamento
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinatore
16163 Genova
Italia