Emanuela Del Dottore

• Doctor of BioRobotics
• Researcher at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

This is a roadmap article with multiple contributors on different aspects of embodying intelligence and computing in the mechanical domain of functional materials and structures. Overall, an IOP roadmap article is a broad, multi-author review with leaders in the field discussing the latest developments, commissioned by the editorial board. The inte...

This paper investigates the penetration performance of soil-burrowing probes with different tip designs during shallow-depth penetration in various media, including terrestrial soils (Hostun sand) and well-characterized planetary soil simulants (LHS-1 Lunar regolith simulant and MGS-1 Martian regolith simulant). The analysis evaluates performance b...

Automated analysis of images containing complex filament network structures has several interesting applications in both two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) environments, including the analysis of filamentous fungi. In this context, both morphology and topology are important features for the characterization of biological samples. Brigh...

This paper investigates the performances shown during underground exploration by a plant root-inspired soil intruder. Plant roots are efficient soil explorers, moving by growing at their apical extremities and morphing their bodies in response to mechanical constraints. A three-dimensional (3D) discrete element model (DEM) was developed to mimic se...

Self-growing robots are an emerging solution in soft robotics for navigating, exploring, and colonizing unstructured environments. However, their ability to grow and move in heterogeneous three-dimensional (3D) spaces, comparable with real-world conditions, is still developing. We present an autonomous growing robot that draws inspiration from the...

Understanding the growth dynamics of filamentous fungi can potentially improve sustainability and climate resilience in agriculture and forestry. Controlled experiments provide the possibility to gain insight into how such dynamics are affected by diverse conditions. In this paper, we propose a method for automatically detecting fungal mycelium in...

Different organisms have been shown to create scalable, fault-tolerant, and efficient networks. Mycorrhizal fungi have an important ecological function and display interesting, yet poorly understood, network creation capabilities. Image analysis algorithms may provide a powerful tool for extracting meaningful quantitative information about fungal s...

The current study investigates the body-environment interaction and exploits the passive viscoelastic properties of the body to perform undulatory locomotion. The investigations are carried out using a mathematical model based on a dry frictional environment, and the results are compared with the performance obtained using a physical model. The phy...

This paper shows the implementation of miniature sensors for soil moisture measurement and their integration in a root-inspired burrowing growing robot. Three kinds of sensors are combined to estimate the water content in soil: a resistivity sensor composed of two brass electrodes, a commercial air humidity sensor interfaced with the soil by a filt...

In recent years, fungi have attracted avid interest from the research community. This interest stems from several motives, including their network creation capabilities and fundamental role in the ecosystem. Controlled laboratory experiments of fungal behaviors are crucial to further understanding their role and functionalities. In this paper, we p...

Combined photothermal‐hygroscopic effects enable novel materials actuation strategies based on renewable and sustainable energy sources such as sunlight. Plasmonic nanoparticles have gained considerable interest as photothermal agents, however, the employment in sunlight‐driven photothermal‐hygroscopic actuators is still bounded, mainly due to the...

This paper proposes a methodology to investigate soil penetration requirements to extract specifications for designing robotic soil excavators and explorers. To this purpose, a three-dimensional (3-D) numerical model based on the Discrete Element Method (DEM) is proposed to simulate an intruder penetration and its interaction with the environment....

Plants thrive in virtually all natural and human-adapted environments and are becoming popular models for developing robotics systems because of their strategies of morphological and behavioral adaptation. Such adaptation and high plasticity offer new approaches for designing, modeling, and controlling artificial systems acting in unstructured scen...

One of the oldest yet most common modalities of locomotion known among limbless animals is undulatory, also recognized for its stability compared to legged locomotion. Multiple forms of active mechanisms, e.g. active gait control, and passive mechanisms, e.g. body morphology and material properties, have adapted to different environments. The curre...

Plants growth is a complex and delicate balance among different factors involving environmental and physiological conditions. In this context, we propose a mechanistic model that considers the main internal processes of plant growth and reproduces a wide range of plant behaviors observed experimentally. In particular, we describe the model plant of...

As miscellaneous as the Plant Kingdom is, correspondingly diverse are the opportunities for taking inspiration from plants for innovations in science and engineering. Especially in robotics, properties like growth, adaptation to environments, ingenious materials, sustainability, and energy-effectiveness of plants provide an extremely rich source of...

Soil is a crucial resource for life on Earth. Every activity, whether natural or man-made, that interacts with the sub or deep soil can affect the land at large scales (e.g. geological risks). Understanding such interactions can help identify more sustainable and less invasive soil penetration, exploration, and monitoring solutions. Over the years,...

Envisioning a rethink of the design of robotic systems is necessary for a step-change in developing more sustainable and efficient artificial machines. Recent trends in robotics have embraced the idea of taking inspiration from plants to create energy-efficient components, self-morphing growing robots, biodegradable robots, and the definition of no...

A broad diversity of biological organisms and systems interact with soil in ways that facilitate their growth and survival. These interactions are made possible by strategies that enable organisms to accomplish functions that can be analogous to those required in geotechnical engineering systems. Examples include anchorage in soft and weak ground,...

The plant root system shows remarkably complex behaviors driven by environmental cues and internal dynamics, whose interplay remains largely unknown. A notable example is circumnutation growth movements, which are growth oscillations from side to side of the root apex. Here we describe a model capable of replicating root growth behaviors, which we...

In this work, we present an image-based method based on 2D piece-wise clothoid for curvature approximation, that is used to analyse the morphology of natural tendrils. Starting from our previous work, here we present an advancement of the sorting skeletonization algorithm which now can handle abrupt changes in the direction of the extracted points....

This paper aims to propose a novel approach to model the dynamics of objects that move within the soil, e.g. plants roots. One can assume that external forces are significant only at the tip of the roots, where the plant’s growth is actuated. We formulate an optimal control problem that minimises the energy spent by a growing root subject to physic...

Removal of heavy metals can be achieved through the adsorption of metal ions onto the surfaces of various materials and composites that either have such properties naturally or are modified to obtain those capabilities. Sodium alginate (SA), a marine polysaccharide, is well known for its heavy metal adsorption ability. In this work, we combined pol...

In plant-fungus phenotyping, determining fungal hyphal and plant root lengths by digital image analysis can reduce labour and increase data reproducibility. However, the degree of software sophistication is often prohibitive and manual measuring is still used, despite being very time-consuming. We developed the HyLength tool for measuring the lengt...

This paper proposes an image-based approach to reconstruct the shape of continuum biological (e.g., tendrils of climbing plants) and artificial (continuum soft robots) structures which can deform into coils or curls with variable curvature that depends on the arc length. The proposed method is based on 2D clothoid curves, for which we explore two r...

One of the major challenges in robotics and engineering is to develop efficient technological solutions that are able to cope with complex environments and unpredictable constraints. Taking inspiration from natural organisms is a well-known approach to tackling these issues. Climbing plants are an important, yet innovative, source of inspiration du...

This paper aims to propose a novel approach to model the dynamics of objects that move within the soil, e.g. plants roots. Since it can be assumed that external forces are significant only at the tip of the roots, where the plant's growth is actuated, we have formulated an optimal control problem that minimises the energy spent by a growing root su...

This paper aims to propose a novel approach to model the dynamics of objects that move within the soil, e.g. plants roots. Since it can be assumed that external forces are significant only at the tip of the roots, where the plant's growth is actuated, we have formulated an optimal control problem that minimises the energy spent by a growing root su...

The transfer of robots from inside of factories to the external unstructured world has generated new functional needs in robotics. The adaptation of bodies and behavior become fundamental features to guarantee a safe interaction between robots, humans, and environment, while managing unpredictable conditions. Soft robotics and bioinspiration are re...

This article presents strategies for the passive path and morphological adaptation of a plant-inspired growing robot that can build its own body by an additive manufacturing process. By exploiting the soft state of the thermoplastic material used by the robot to build its structure, we analyzed the ability of the robot to change its direction of gr...

Soft Robotics: In article number 1900041, Barbara Mazzolai, and co‐workers present an octopus‐inspired soft arm with suction cups to retrieve objects from confined environments. The proposed solution benefits both from the arm conformability and the improved grasping force generated by suction cups. Starting from the investigation of the octopus' m...

Octopuses have impressive manipulation capabilities empowered by the intrinsic adaptation of their soft arms combined with distributed suckers. Drawing inspiration from the arm morphology and abilities of the octopus, this paper presents the integrated design of a conical soft robotic arm endowed with suction cups. The proposed arm exploits soft ro...

Growing robots are a new class of robots able to move in the environment exploiting a growing from the tip process (movement by growing). Thanks to this property, these robots are able to navigate 3D environments while negotiating confined spaces and large voids by adapting their body. During the exploration of the environment, the tip of the robot...

Plants are far from being passive organisms being able to exhibit complex behaviours in response to environmental stimuli. How these stimuli are combined, triggered and managed is still an open and complex issue in biology. Mathematical models have helped in understanding some of the pieces in the complexity of intra-plant communication, but a larg...

This paper presents a new design for material extrusion as embeddable additive manufacturing technology for growing robots inspired by plant roots. The conceptual design is proposed and based on the deposition of thermoplastic material a complete layer at a time. To guide the design of the system, we first studied the thermal properties through app...

In this paper we describe the conceptual design and implementation of the SIMBA manipulator, designed and developed for participating in the RoboSoft Grand Challenge 2016. In our novel design we have proposed: 1) a modular continuum arm with independent actuation units for each module, to increase maintainability; 2) a soft reconfigurable hand, for...

This paper provides the very first definition of “growing robots”: a category of robots that imitates biological growth by the incremental addition of material. Although this nomenclature is quite new, the concept of morphological evolution, which is behind growth, has been extensively addressed in engineering and robotics. In fact, the idea of rep...

We present the basic module of a modular continuum arm (soft compliant manipulator for broad applications (SIMBA)). SIMBA is a robotic arm with a hybrid structure, namely a combination of rigid and soft components, which makes the arm highly versatile, dexterous, and robust. These key features are due to the design of its basic module, which is cha...

We present the basic module of a modular continuum arm (soft compliant manipulator for broad applications (SIMBA)). SIMBA is a robotic arm with a hybrid structure, namely a combination of rigid and soft components, which makes the arm highly versatile, dexterous, and robust. These key features are due to the design of its basic module, which is cha...

This paper presents a plant root behavior-based approach to defining the control architecture of a plant-root-inspired robot, which is composed of three root-agents for nutrient uptake and one shoot-agent for nutrient redistribution. By taking inspiration and extracting key principles from the uptake of nutrient, movements and communication strateg...

This paper presents a comparative analysis in terms of energy required by an artificial probe to penetrate soil implementing two different strategies: a straight penetration movement and a circumnutation, which is an oscillatory movement performed by plant roots. The role of circumnutations in plant roots is still debated. We hypothesized that circ...

In this paper, we describe the conceptual design and implementation of the Soft Compliant Manipulator for Broad Applications (SIMBA) manipulator, which is designed and developed for participating in the RoboSoft Grand Challenge 2016. In our novel design, we have proposed (1) a modular continuum arm with independent actuation units for each module,...

We present the design and development of a plant-inspired robot, named Plantoid, with sensorized robotic roots. Natural roots have a multi-sensing capability and show a soft bending behaviour to follow or escape from various environmental parameters (i.e., tropisms). Analogously, we implement soft bending capabilities in our robotic roots by design...

In recent years, robotics has been influenced by a new approach, soft-robotics, bringing the idea that safe interaction with user and more adaptation to the environment can be achieved by exploiting easily deformable materials and flexible components in the structure of robots. In 2016, the soft-robotics community has promoted a new robotics challe...

Media aggregators combine the convenience of the RSS information feeds with the capabilities of media sharing and distribution. Personal media aggregators not only provide a way to create, store and distribute thematic content but also allow users to customize the way material is collected, transformed and further distributed. We present the archit...