Human skin is a remarkable organ. It consists of an integrated, stretchable network of sensors that relay information about tactile and thermal stimuli to the brain, allowing us to maneuver within our environment safely and effectively. Interest in large-area networks of electronic devices inspired by human skin is motivated by the promise of creating autonomous intelligent robots and biomimetic prosthetics, among other applications. The development of electronic networks comprised of flexible, stretchable, and robust devices that are compatible with large-area implementation and integrated with multiple functionalities is a testament to the progress in developing an electronic skin (e-skin) akin to human skin. E-skins are already capable of providing augmented performance over their organic counterpart, both in superior spatial resolution and thermal sensitivity. They could be further improved through the incorporation of additional functionalities (e.g., chemical and biological sensing) and desired properties (e.g., biodegradability and self-powering). Continued rapid progress in this area is promising for the development of a fully integrated e-skin in the near future.

25th Anniversary Article: The Evolution of Electronic Skin (E-Skin): A Brief History, Design Considerations, and Recent Progress

Organ printing can be defined as layer-by-layer additive robotic biofabrication of three-dimensional functional living macrotissues and organ constructs using tissue spheroids as building blocks. The microtissues and tissue spheroids are living materials with certain measurable, evolving and potentially controllable composition, material and biological properties. Closely placed tissue spheroids undergo tissue fusion - a process that represents a fundamental biological and biophysical principle of developmental biology-inspired directed tissue self-assembly. It is possible to engineer small segments of an intraorgan branched vascular tree by using solid and lumenized vascular tissue spheroids. Organ printing could dramatically enhance and transform the field of tissue engineering by enabling large-scale industrial robotic biofabrication of living human organ constructs with "built-in" perfusable intraorgan branched vascular tree. Thus, organ printing is a new emerging enabling technology paradigm which represents a developmental biology-inspired alternative to classic biodegradable solid scaffold-based approaches in tissue engineering.

Organ Printing: Tissue Spheroids as Building Blocks

Scientists are exploring elastic and soft forms of robots, electronic skin and energy harvesters, dreaming to mimic nature and to enable novel applications in wide fields, from consumer and mobile appliances to biomedical systems, sports and healthcare. All conceivable classes of materials with a wide range of mechanical, physical and chemical properties are employed, from liquids and gels to organic and inorganic solids. Functionalities never seen before are achieved. In this review we discuss soft robots which allow actuation with several degrees of freedom. We show that different actuation mechanisms lead to similar actuators, capable of complex and smooth movements in 3d space. We introduce latest research examples in sensor skin development and discuss ultraflexible electronic circuits, light emitting diodes and solar cells as examples. Additional functionalities of sensor skin, such as visual sensors inspired by animal eyes, camouflage, self-cleaning and healing and on-skin energy storage and generation are briefly reviewed. Finally, we discuss a paradigm change in energy harvesting, away from hard energy generators to soft ones based on dielectric elastomers. Such systems are shown to work with high energy of conversion, making them potentially interesting for harvesting mechanical energy from human gait, winds and ocean waves.

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25th Anniversary Article: A Soft Future: From Robots and Sensor Skin to Energy Harvesters

Untethered robots miniaturized to the length scale of millimeter and below attract growing attention for the prospect of transforming many aspects of health care and bioengineering. As the robot size goes down to the order of a single cell, previously inaccessible body sites would become available for high-resolution in situ and in vivo manipulations. This unprecedented direct access would enable an extensive range of minimally invasive medical operations. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of the current advances in biomedical untethered mobile milli/microrobots. We put a special emphasis on the potential impacts of biomedical microrobots in the near future. Finally, we discuss the existing challenges and emerging concepts associated with designing such a miniaturized robot for operation inside a biological environment for biomedical applications.

Biomedical Applications of Untethered Mobile Milli/Microrobots

Dielectric elastomer (DE) actuators are popularly referred to as artificial muscles because their impressive actuation strain and speed, low density, compliant nature, and silent operation capture many of the desirable physical properties of muscle. Unlike conventional robots and machines, whose mechanisms and drive systems rapidly become very complex as the number of degrees of freedom increases, groups of DE artificial muscles have the potential to generate rich motions combining many translational and rotational degrees of freedom. These artificial muscle systems can mimic the agonist-antagonist approach found in nature, so that active expansion of one artificial muscle is taken up by passive contraction in the other. They can also vary their stiffness. In addition, they have the ability to produce electricity from movement. But departing from the high stiffness paradigm of electromagnetic motors and gearboxes leads to new control challenges, and for soft machines to be truly dexterous like their biological analogues, they need precise control. Humans control their limbs using sensory feedback from strain sensitive cells embedded in muscle. In DE actuators, deformation is inextricably linked to changes in electrical parameters that include capacitance and resistance, so the state of strain can be inferred by sensing these changes, enabling the closed loop control that is critical for a soft machine. But the increased information processing required for a soft machine can impose a substantial burden on a central controller. The natural solution is to distribute control within the mechanism itself. The octopus arm is an example of a soft actuator with a virtually infinite number of degrees of freedom (DOF). The arm utilizes neural ganglia to process sensory data at the local “arm” level and perform complex tasks. Recent advances in soft electronics such as the piezoresistive dielectric elastomer switch (DES) have the potential to be fully integrated with actuators and sensors. With the DE switch, we can produce logic gates, oscillators, and a memory element, the building blocks for a soft computer, thus bringing us closer to emulating smart living structures like the octopus arm. The goal of future research is to develop fully soft machines that exploit smart actuation networks to gain capabilities formerly reserved to nature, and open new vistas in mechanical engineering.

Multi-functional dielectric elastomer artificial muscles for soft and smart machines

Dielectric elastomers offer the promise of energy harvesting with few moving parts. Power can be produced simply by stretching and contracting a relatively low-cost rubbery material. This simplicity, combined with demonstrated high energy density and high efficiency, suggests that dielectric elastomers are promising for a wide range of energy harvesting applications. Indeed, dielectric elastomers have been demonstrated to harvest energy from human walking, ocean waves, flowing water, blowing wind, and pushing buttons. While the technology is promising, there are challenges that must be addressed if dielectric elastomers are to be a successful and economically viable energy harvesting technology. These challenges include developing materials and packaging that sustains long lifetime over a range of environmental conditions, design of the devices that stretch the elastomer material, as well as system issues such as practical and efficient energy harvesting circuits. Progress has been made in many of these areas. We have demonstrated energy harvesting transducers that have operated over 5 million cycles. We have also shown the ability of dielectric elastomer material to survive for months underwater while undergoing voltage cycling. We have shown circuits capable of 78% energy harvesting efficiency. While the possibility of long lifetime has been demonstrated at the watt level, reliably scaling up to the power levels required for providing renewable energy to the power grid or for local use will likely require further development from the material through to the systems level.

From Boots to Buoys: Promises and Challenges of Dielectric Elastomer Energy Harvesting

Stretchable electronics can go beyond what might commonly be considered “electronics.” They can exploit their inherent elasticity to enable new types of transducers that convert between electrical energy and mechanical energy. Dielectric elastomer actuators are “stretchable capacitors” that can offer muscle-like strain and force response to an applied voltage. As generators, dielectric elastomers offer the promise of energy harvesting with few moving parts. Power can be produced simply by stretching and contracting a relatively low-cost rubbery material. This simplicity, combined with demonstrated high energy density and high efficiency, suggests that dielectric elastomers are promising for a wide range of energy-harvesting applications. Indeed, dielectric elastomers have been demonstrated to harvest energy from human walking, ocean waves, flowing water, blowing wind, pushing buttons, and heat engines. While the technology is promising and advances are being made, there are challenges that must be addressed if dielectric elastomers are to be a successful and economically viable energy-harvesting technology. These challenges include developing materials and packaging that sustain a long lifetime over a range of environmental conditions, designing the devices that stretch the elastomer material uniformly, and system issues such as practical and efficient energy-harvesting circuits.

Dielectric elastomers: Stretching the capabilities of energy harvesting

Using large numbers of micro robots to build unique macrostructures has long been a vision in both popular and scientific media. This paper describes a new class of machines, DiaMagnetic Micro Manipulator (DM3) systems, for controlling many small robots. The robots are diamagnetically levitated with zero wear and zero hysteresis and are driven using conventional circuits. System test results have reported unusual motion properties, including exceptional open loop repeatability of motion (200 nm rms) and relative speeds (37.5 cm/s or 217 body lengths/s) [1]. A system using 130 micro robots as small as 1.7 mm with densities up to 12.5 robots/cm2 has been demonstrated. This paper reports initial data on robot trajectories, and shows that open loop trajectory repeatabilities on the order of 0.8 µm rms or better are feasible in a levitated state compared with 15 µm rms repeatability in a non-levitated state with surface contact. These results suggest an encouraging path to complex micro-robotic systems with broad capabilities.

Diamagnetically levitated robots: An approach to massively parallel robotic systems with unusual motion properties

In this article, we demonstrate the application of diamagnetically levitated milli-robots for the 2D micro-assembly of 10-μm polymer microspheres and other silicon microfabricated parts. By using an optical microscope for feedback (imaged at 27 Hz), we are able to demonstrate long-term open-loop stability (up to 78 hr) and sub-micron stability of the levitated micro-robots. Furthermore, due to the low hysteresis and high compliance in the magnetic drive of the milli-robots, we are able to directly use the milli-robots in conjunction with machine vision as a force sensor. Soft polymer-based end effectors are used for the micromanipulation of parts and show modest reliability of pick (>70%) and high reliability of place (>99%) that is insensitive to the pick surface material. Finally, we implement autonomous micro-assembly from randomly deposited microspheres into ordered arrays.

Automated 2D micro-assembly using diamagnetically levitated milli-robots

An electroadhesive gripping system includes a shear gripper. The shear gripper can include an electroadhesive surface associated with one or more electrodes and a load-bearing structure coupled to the electroadhesive surface. A power supply can be configured to apply voltage to the one or more electrodes associated with the electroadhesive surface. A controller can be configured to cause a voltage to be applied, via the power supply, to the one or more electrodes associated with the electroadhesive surface to thereby cause the first shear gripper to adhere to an item situated proximate the electroadhesive surface. The controller can be configured to cause a shear force to be applied to the adhered item, via the load-bearing structure, that is sufficient to move the adhered item.

Brian McCoy

Papers

From Boots to Buoys: Promises and Challenges of Dielectric Elastomer Energy Harvesting

Dielectric elastomers: Stretching the capabilities of energy harvesting

Diamagnetically levitated robots: An approach to massively parallel robotic systems with unusual motion properties

Automated 2D micro-assembly using diamagnetically levitated milli-robots

Electroadhesive handling and manipulation