EFRI C3 SoRo: An integrated approach towards computational design, fabrication and understanding of bio-hybrid soft architectures capable of adaptive behavior

该项目的目标是对微米到厘米大小的软生物混合机器人进行建模、设计、制造和研究，这些机器人将人工元素和活的生物细胞结合在一起。生物部件有望为这些机器人提供自然有机体的自我组装、治愈、生长和适应不同环境的能力。这个项目是由制造技术的最新进步使之成为可能的，这些技术允许人造元素与一系列活细胞类型(如肌肉和神经元)相结合。因此，提出的迷你生物混合机器人是顺应的、可配置的、生物兼容的，并且可以利用当地的营养物质发电。生物混合机器人还可以表现出对不确定环境的适应性行为，从而提供了一系列高影响应用的前景，包括局部药物输送、环境探测和化学传感、评估体内潜在的手术部位以及精密操作和制造。这符合国家需要通过提高医疗效果以及刺激先进制造技术的发展来降低医疗成本，以提高竞争力。这一努力面向了广泛的受众：有什么能比让微型机器人复活更能激发潜在年轻科学家的想象力。这一领域的兴奋将通过从博物馆展览到部署高中和K-12直观学习模块的一系列活动来发挥，以培养人们对先进计算、机械、数学、制造和生物的兴趣。Soft机器人目前受到缺乏严格工程方法的限制。在生物杂交系统中，由于包含了生物成分，直觉驱动的方法进一步受到限制，这一点更不为人所知。该项目寻求创建一种基于建模、模拟和制造的系统方法，以克服这些限制并实现部署和可扩展性。该项目的核心是功能单元的概念，这是一种层次化的生物混合组件，可以组合成能够实现更高级别功能的综合机器人系统，就像组织活的有机体和面向对象的软件一样。通过采用这种类比，我们考虑了五个基本构建块(肌肉和神经元细胞、弹性体、多稳态屈曲结构、无线整合电子学)，从而：(1)引入一种基于Cosserat杆组件的新型数学公式，以建模其机械响应、驱动以及与环境的交互作用；(2)开发软件来模拟复合材料功能单元的动力学，并根据期望的目标行为对其进行优化；(3)制造和测试所获得的解决方案，并在实验基础上更新模型；(4)通过能够执行复杂任务的工程集成机器人展示新的理解。因此，这项工作总体上致力于实现自主、自适应的迷你机器人的愿景，并为生物混合软工程科学奠定分析、计算和实验基础。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The goal of this project is to model, design, fabricate and study micrometer to centimeter size soft bio-hybrid robots that bring together artificial elements and living biological cells. Living components promise to provide these robots with a natural organism's abilities to self-assemble, heal, grow, and to adapt to varying environments. This project is made possible by recent advances in fabrication techniques that allow artificial elements to be combined with an array of living cell types such as muscles and neurons. The proposed mini bio-hybrid robots are thus compliant, configurable, biocompatible, and can generate power from local nutrients. Bio-hybrid robots can also exhibit adaptive behaviors in response to uncertain environments, and thus offer the promise of a host of high impact applications including localized drug delivery, environmental exploration and chemical sensing, evaluation of potential surgical sites within the body, and precision manipulation and fabrication. This is in line with the national need to reduce healthcare costs by enhancing medical effectiveness as well as stimulating the development of advanced manufacturing techniques to increase competitiveness. This effort speaks to a broad audience: what can spark the imagination of potential young scientists better than bringing tiny robots to life. Excitement in this area will be leveraged via activities ranging from museum exhibitions to the deployment of high school and K-12 intuitive learning modules, in order to foster interest in advanced computing, mechanics, math, manufacturing, and biology.Soft robotics is currently constrained by a lack of rigorous engineering methods. Intuition-driven approaches are further strained in the case of bio-hybrid systems due to the inclusion of the living component, which is even less well understood. This project seeks to create a systematic approach based on modeling, simulation, and fabrication to overcome these limitations and enable deployment and scalability. Central to this project is the concept of functional units, hierarchical bio-hybrid assemblies that can be combined into integrated robotic systems capable of higher level functions, much like the organization of living organisms and object-oriented software. By embracing this analogy, five fundamental building blocks (muscle and neuron cells, elastomers, multi-stable buckling structures, wireless conformable electronics) are considered, so as to: (1) introduce a novel mathematical formalism based on Cosserat rod assemblies to model their mechanical response, actuation and interaction with the environment; (2) develop software to simulate the dynamics of composite functional units and to optimize them according to a desired target behavior; (3) fabricate and test obtained solutions, and update models based on experiments; (4) showcase new understanding by engineering integrated bots able to perform complex tasks. Thus, this effort overall deals with enabling the vision of autonomous, adaptive mini-bots and laying the analytical, computational and experimental foundations of a bio-hybrid soft engineering science.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.