Meisam Abdi, a researcher at De Montfort University (DMU) in Leicester, UK, has been awarded a 2026/27 Royal Academy of Engineering/Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship to investigate whether 3D printing can produce artificial muscles for soft robots.
Abdi is one of eight engineers in the UK to receive the award, which funds up to a year of research into materials and structures that could allow robots to move, sense and respond more like living organisms.
A case for softer robots
Abdi frames the work around safety in human-facing environments. If people are to interact safely with robots in places such as hospitals, he argues, the field needs to move away from completely rigid structures and consider how robots might be given some of the attributes seen in living systems.
Piezoelectric materials, printed as cellular structures
The project focuses on piezoelectric materials, which can convert mechanical deformation into electrical energy and deform when an electric field is applied. DMU notes that existing high-performance piezoelectric materials are often stiff and brittle, while some of the most widely used contain lead, characteristics that complicate the development of soft, flexible and more sustainable artificial muscles.
Abdi's approach combines material composition with specially designed 3D printed cellular structures, with the aim of reaching the required properties while remaining soft and flexible.
Rather than reproducing the physical structure of a human muscle, he plans to use additive manufacturing to design architected structures whose geometry gives them specific properties. Different combinations of piezoelectric, conductive and structural materials and architectures will be modelled with computer-aided engineering, 3D printed and then tested in the laboratory for how they respond to electrical stimulation.
Modelling with computer-aided engineering comes before printing and laboratory testing, with material combinations and structural geometry as the parameters under investigation. Each printed sample is then assessed for its response to an applied electric field.
The longer-term aim is artificial muscles that can produce movement, sense their environment and harvest small amounts of electrical energy from mechanical movement or vibration.
Not copying nature
"Biological systems are remarkable because they can combine movement, sensing and responses to external stimuli," Abdi said. "The question for us is whether we can design and manufacture an artificial structure that can reproduce some of those functions."
He added that the team is not trying to copy something that already exists in nature: by changing the materials and the geometry of these structures, the researchers want to see whether they can create properties that do not currently exist naturally.
Abdi described the project as ambitious. There is already significant research into soft robotics, he said, but creating something that can begin to replicate the multiple functions of living muscle remains a major challenge.
His stated ambition for the fellowship is to develop a prototype that demonstrates what is possible and can provide a foundation for further research.