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. He 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 let robots move, sense and respond more like living organisms.
Abdi’s project starts from a different premise than replicating 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 are to be modeled with computer-aided engineering, 3D printed and tested in the laboratory for their response to electrical stimulation.
Movement, sensing and energy harvesting
The longer-term aim is an artificial muscle that can produce movement, sense its environment and harvest small amounts of electrical energy from mechanical movement or vibration. Abdi said biological systems were notable for combining movement, sensing and responses to external stimuli. The question for the project is whether an artificial structure can be designed and manufactured to reproduce some of those functions.
He added that the work is not an attempt to copy something that already exists in nature. By changing materials and geometry, the project will examine whether it can create properties that do not currently exist naturally. Those are research goals, not demonstrated results; the fellowship is intended to support modeling, printing and laboratory testing.
Piezoelectric materials and softness
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. 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 to reach the required properties while remaining soft and flexible. He described the project as ambitious. He said there is already significant research into soft robotics, but creating something that can begin to replicate the multiple functions of living muscle remains a major challenge.
During the fellowship, Abdi’s ambition is to develop a prototype that demonstrates what is possible and can provide a foundation for further research. The work is at an early stage: the fellowship supports modeling, printing and testing, and no completed device or validated performance is claimed at this stage.