Background
Loïc TADRIST is an Associate Professor at Aix-Marseille University (since 2020) and an IUF (Institut de France) Innovation Chair Fellow (2026–2031). His works spans physics of fluidics, soft matter, elasticity and fluid-structure interaction, shaped by his PhD (École Polytechnique/INRAE) and postdoctoral work at the University of Liège.
His research focuses in resilient actuators and interactions between fluid and soft solids in plants. By prototyping new experimental models and methods to explore the fundamental biomechanics of plants, he tries uncover insights that drive engineering innovations (frugal design, resilience, minimalism). https://lab.tadrist.com
Title
Stiffness And Resilience Of Pressurized Cellular Solids: From Nature To Robots
Abstract
In industry, critical motions are secured by actuator redundancy and oversizing. This strategy makes systems massive, costly and energy consuming. Soft robots made of pressurized cells have multiple degrees of freedom (DOF) which are independently actuated. This configuration is interesting because when some elementary cells are damaged, surrounding cells may take over. This configuration is similar to plant pulvini that actuate leaves. Here, we present a bioinspired soft actuator with a decentralized architecture of individually pressurizable cells. We show that the actuator can maintain positioning accuracy despite significant degradation. These results highlight the potential of distributed actuation and structural redundancy for enhancing resilience in soft robots, while opening new perspectives toward adaptive, self-correcting actuators capable of operating under uncertainty and partial failure.
The second part of the talk focuses on the pressure induced stiffness of cellular solids. This phenomenon occurs in our everyday life when an apple let in a fridge for few days softens. We show that the turgor induced stiffness in plants originates from nonlinear behaviour of the cell wall.