Co-Fabrication of Live Skeletal Muscles as Actuators in AMillimeter Scale Mechanical System
Functional muscle tissue holds promise as a practical actuator for use in engineering applications.Previously, functional live-cell muscle actuators used for robotics have not scaled greater than about 10 μm, the size of a single monolayer of cells. We present a method to produce larger scale muscle actuators fully integrated into a mechanical structure. We use manufacturing techniques including printing a mold, pouring a molded part, and deposition of cell suspension. Our method allows for co-fabrication of actuator and mechanism through muscle self-assembly. We incorporate muscle construct technologies such that the muscle is fully 3D,anchored, and aligned, yielding a 10 mm long and 0.5 mm thick aligned muscle actuator. By co-fabricating the mechanism and actuators, the muscles are produced and used in the same environmental conditions, the process is more robust and repeatable, and evaluation of performance is under identical conditions to those in which the actuator is used. By using the presented method, variable geometry and multiple degrees of freedom can all be incorporated in a single mechanical structure.
Devin Neal Harry Asada
Mechanical Engineering Department,MIT,Cambridge,MA 02139 USA
国际会议
2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation(2011年IEEE世界机器人与自动化大会 ICRA 2011)
上海
英文
3251-3256
2011-05-09（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）