Meisam Abdi, a researcher at De Montfort University Leicester in the UK, has received a 2026/27 Royal Academy of Engineering/Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship to investigate whether 3D printing can produce artificial muscles for soft robots.
Abdi was one of eight engineers in the UK to receive the award. The fellowship funds up to a year of research into materials and structures that could allow robots to move, sense and respond more like living organisms.
Abdi said safe interaction with robots in places such as hospitals would require moving away from completely rigid structures and considering how robots could be given some of the attributes seen in living systems.
Architected structures, not muscle replicas
Rather than reproducing the physical structure of a human muscle, Abdi 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 modeled with computer-aided engineering, 3D printed and tested in the laboratory for their response to electrical stimulation.
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.
Abdi said biological systems were remarkable because they combine movement, sensing and responses to external stimuli. The question, he said, is whether an artificial structure can be designed and manufactured to reproduce some of those functions.
He also said the project was not trying to copy something that already exists in nature. By changing materials and geometry, the aim is to see whether properties that do not currently exist naturally can be created.
Piezoelectric trade-offs
The project focuses on piezoelectric materials, which can convert mechanical deformation into electrical energy and deform under an applied electric field. De Montfort University said existing high-performance piezoelectric materials are often stiff and brittle, while some of the most widely used contain lead, complicating the development of soft, flexible and more sustainable artificial muscles.
Abdi's approach combines material composition with specially designed 3D printed cellular structures to reach the required properties while remaining soft and flexible.
The laboratory work is intended to examine how different material and architecture combinations respond to electrical stimulation, connecting the functional behavior of piezoelectric materials with the mechanical behavior of printed cellular structures.
Prototype goal
Abdi described the project as ambitious. He said significant research into soft robotics already exists, but creating something that can begin to replicate the multiple functions of living muscle remains a major challenge.
His ambition during the fellowship is to develop a prototype that demonstrates what is possible and can provide the foundation for further research.
The award places the work within a broader effort to make robots less rigid and more adaptable for interaction with people. The project's stated near-term goal is a prototype; the planned tests are designed to establish how selected materials and printed architectures respond to electrical stimulation.