Meisam Abdi, a researcher at De Montfort University Leicester in the UK, has been awarded a 2026/27 Royal Academy of Engineering/Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship to study 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.
Designing properties rather than copying anatomy
Rather than attempting to reproduce the physical structure of a human muscle, Abdi plans to use additive manufacturing to create architected structures whose geometry gives them specific properties. The work will model different combinations of piezoelectric, conductive and structural materials and architectures using computer-aided engineering. These designs are then to be 3D printed and tested in the laboratory for their response to electrical stimulation.
The project focuses on piezoelectric materials, which can convert mechanical deformation into electrical energy and deform when an electric field is applied. According to DMU, existing high-performance piezoelectric materials are often stiff and brittle, and some of the most widely used contain lead. Those characteristics complicate the development of soft, flexible and more sustainable artificial muscles.
Abdi’s approach combines material composition with specially designed 3D-printed cellular structures. The aim is to reach the required properties while keeping the structures soft and flexible.
Movement, sensing and energy harvesting
The longer-term objective 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 are 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.
“We aren’t trying to copy something that already exists in nature,” Abdi said. “By changing the materials and the geometry of these structures, we want to see whether we can create properties that don’t currently exist naturally.”
He also linked the work to safety in settings such as hospitals, where people may interact with robots. “If we want people to interact safely with robots in places such as hospitals, we need to move away from completely rigid structures and think about how we can give robots some of the attributes we see in living systems,” he said.
Abdi described the project as ambitious. He noted that soft robotics already attracts significant research, but creating something that can begin to replicate the multiple functions of living muscle remains a major challenge. His goal during the fellowship is to develop a prototype that demonstrates what is possible and provides a foundation for further research.