Mechanics and resilience of a biomimetic Pulvinus – MExP

One challenge of 4.0 Industry is to design damage resilient actuators. Today, to secure critical mechanisms, several actuators are used in series or parallel (redundancy). When the main actuator is damaged, one of these redundant actuators takes over. The design of resilient actuators will avoid this redundancy. Significant savings in terms of mass, space, materials and energy are expected.

To create these resilient actuators, one possibility is to mimic biological actuators whose performance is preserved in case of local damage. For example, in mimosa pudica, pulvini (leaf pads that allow reversible leaf movement) allow the leaves to fold up when touched. These "plant muscles" are excellent candidates for biomimicry because even with 30% of their motor cells removed, they continue to perform their function. The biomimetic challenge is to control the actuator at the cellular level in a manner similar to nature.

MExP project goal (Machina Ex Pulvino: The machine from the pulvinus) is to show that cellular level control allows damage adaptation. Mechanical performance in terms of force and displacement will thus be preserved.

MExP will open perspectives to the development of resilient multi-cellular actuators in industrial projects. It will also provide a better understanding of the mechanics of resilience. This will apply to pulvini and most multi-cellular biological actuators.