Michael Lerch awarded prestigious ERC Starting Grant for “TactoChem” project

Michael Lerch has been awarded a €1,5 million, 5-year European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant for his project entitled TactoChem – Touch Detection Through Autocatalytic Transmission of Mechano-Chemical Signals. This ERC award enables promising early-career scientists to establish independent research teams pursuing ground breaking scientific ideas.

A Chemical Sense of Touch for Robots

In this project, Michael Lerch and his team will develop novel types of mechanosensors that set the basis for a sense of touch for robots. Myriad tactile sensors are responsible for the fine motor skills and dexterity we rely on for everyday tasks. Yet, current robots struggle with this, as achieving high sensor density and integration remains challenging. TactoChem develops chemical mechanosensors and integrates them directly into robotic materials. In this way, the research team will be able to build in a sense of touch and movement reflexes – inspired by the baby grasp reflex – to robots. When activated by touch, these novel chemical mechanosensors will initiate and amplify chemical signaling cascades, triggering reflex-like movements through synthetic vasculature networks—creating an integrated chemical sense–response arc.

This novel approach, combining mechanochemistry, smart materials design, and embedded chemical information processing, provides an alternative approach to classical hard robots to provide softer and safer robots – without electronics or rigid components – that ultimately resemble a human sense of touch. As such, the project has the potential to deliver safe, autonomous, and adaptive robotic systems—particularly suited for delicate environments such as medical care, rehabilitation, and prosthetics.

Project summary: Life would be unthinkable without a sense of touch, for which we rely on densely distributed (mechano)sensors as part of our sensorimotor system, allowing us to grab objects and manipulate tools. From early on in life, reflexive movements (i.e., baby grasp reflex) ensure tight integration of sensing, signal processing, and movement. Such high-density local integration poses a fundamental challenge for robotics, as robotic sensing remains limited and expensive. Advancements in tactile sensing technologies based on new chemistry will be key enablers for future robots, particularly based on soft materials that are at the helm of a materials revolution for medical and general-purpose robotics.

With TactoChem, the team will develop an artificial reflex arc for soft materials based on chemical mechanosensors that initiate chemical signaling cascades for movement. Chemical mechanosensors, like biological ones, are inherently nanoscale, scalable, and integrate with a material´s chemistry. Yet current mechanochemical tools are not designed for repeated production of strong signals and eliciting motion. Moreover, diffusive signaling is slow. TactoChem will establish new mechanophores – molecules that respond to mechanical force – and use autocatalysis to amplify their signal. To enable selective, even parallel signaling, and rapid movements of soft materials, we will leverage autocatalytic reactions locally delivered through networks of channels (synthetic vasculature). The resulting chemical analog of basic movement reflexes, akin to the knee-jerk or to baby grasp reflexes, will provide a first integrated chemical system for touch-based movement control. Mastering a sense of touch by chemical means will enable the design of novel robotic components made from soft materials without the need for electronic circuits and external power. As such, it has the power to fundamentally change how we think and design materials and robots.

Link to an explanatory video.