BioINspired adapTAble Caring fooT (INTACT) for robots

Soil is of paramount importance for various critical functions such as food production, water regulation, habitat provisioning, and carbon storage. Soil compaction is one of the factors endangering food security. Soil compaction not only affects soil structure but also has repercussions on plant root development, proliferation, and overall growth and productivity. It's concerning to note that approximately twice the total area of Wales faces the risk of soil compaction and the substantial annual losses of £1.2 billion in the UK due to soil compaction, degradation, and erosion. This damage is primarily attributed to the use of heavy machinery in agriculture, varying from tillage to harvesting, as well as soil characteristics like clay content, water content, and crop rotation practices.
Therefore, INTACT's vision is to facilitate the utilization of future agricultural autonomous systems, drawing inspiration from nature, such as the alpaca's foot, to ensure sustainable food production. Drawing from previous research on bioinspired hooves and the development of soft, stiffness-controllable robotic structures, this project aims to design, fabricate, model, and validate a BioINspired adapTAble Caring fooT (INTACT) for robots. The alpaca foot was chosen as bioinspiration due to its capability of walking in terrains with high variability (e.g., hills) while producing a low trampling impact on the terrain. INTACT will be integrated into a legged robot to investigate and evaluate its adaptability to changing terrain conditions while reducing the trampling damage on the terrain.
Close collaboration with key academic partners and industrial experts will enhance the success of this project.  The academic partners are: Dr Iain Gould (Associate professor in soil science), University of Lincoln and Prof John Hutchinson (Professor of evolutionary biomechanics), Royal Veterinary College. The industrial partners are Marc Jones (Commercial Director) from ANTOBOT and Paul Fitz (Business development manager) from ANYbiotics AG, who will advise about the translation of the INTACT in farming and field robots applications, respectively. The partners will be part of the expert working group that will meet every six months to advise about the design, evaluation, implementation, and translation of the outcomes of this project.
The objectives to achieve this ambition are:
1) Studying, understanding, and abstracting the characteristics/embodiment of the biological alpaca foot related to its terrain caring and adaptability capabilities.
2) Creating a bioinspired robotic foot that embodies the alpaca foot terrain caring and adaptability capabilities
3) Validating the robotic foot embodiment contribution to its adaptability and caring terrain capabilities.
Potential applications and benefits:
This project's three main beneficiaries are (i) researchers, (ii) policymakers, and (iii) industry.
(i) INTACT can advance the knowledge in the field of bioinspired designs by investigating new passive bioinspired mechanical foot whose body enhances its adaptability to terrain while decreasing the impact on the terrain and vegetation.
(ii) Incorporating INTACT into legged robots can foster the creation of innovative algorithms that seamlessly cooperate with INTACT, thereby augmenting the adaptability of these legged robots. This will also enable their use in agriculture.
(ii) INTACT's findings and outcomes, such as data collection, can aid policymakers in formulating and assessing strategies to address agricultural soil health challenges resulting from climate change and unsustainable practices. This will be accomplished by leveraging on the PL's prior experience contributing to Parliamentary POSTnotes [4,27].
(iii) The INTACT can widen and enhance the usability of commercially available field-legged robots.