Lausanne scientists create 3D-printed elephant robot

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 Thursday. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox 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 ...