Often in science fiction, robots are given a humanoid appearance and functionality: a head, torso and four limbs – walking upright on two of them. In reality, robots take many shapes and sizes and are designed to perform a wide variety of tasks that require very different abilities.
Scientists are always looking for new ways robots can complete complex tasks, and learning new approaches in how these machines can move opens up many more possible uses, including ones that may have previously been out of reach.
Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill used real-world experiments with octopuses and advanced computer simulations at two U.S. National Science Foundation ACCESS resource providers to improve the design and control of soft robotic arms. By creating a detailed virtual model of an octopus limb composed of hundreds of interconnected muscle groups, simulations on Bridges-2 at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) and Frontera at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) allowed them to test different control strategies and compare them with observed biological behavior. The team published their results in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA” in October 2024. Their paper earned the prestigious cover image of that issue.
Mattia Gazzola, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at Illinois, said the team ran hundreds of simulations simultaneously to explore different options and parameters for controlling the virtual limb.
A major challenge for Gazzola and the researchers was controlling such a highly flexible, modeled structure. Octopus arms contain intricate arrangements of muscles that can stiffen or relax as needed, allowing them to switch seamlessly between rigid and fluid movements. While the assumption might be that coordinating these muscles requires extremely complicated control systems, researchers set out to determine whether simpler underlying principles govern these movements.
The coordinated allocation through ACCESS enabled researchers to leverage the strengths of both Bridges-2 and Frontera to advance their simulations.You can read more about this story here: Octopus Simulation Surprise Sheds Light on Soft Robot Tech
Resource Provider Institution(s): Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)
Resources Used: Bridges, Frontera
Affiliations: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Funding Agency: This study was jointly funded by ONR MURI N00014-19-1-2373 (M.G., P.G.M., and R.G.), ONR N00014-22-1-2569 (M.G.), NSF EFRI C3 SoRo #1830881 (M.G.), NSF CAREER #1846752 (M.G.), NSF EXPEDITION #IIS -2123781 (M.G.), and NSF IOS-1755231 (W.K.).
Grant or Allocation Number(s): BIO240096
The science story featured here was enabled by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s ACCESS program, which is supported by National Science Foundation grants #2138259, #2138286, #2138307, #2137603, and #2138296.