CAREER: Adaptive Actuation and Control in Embodied Biohybrid Robots

动物经常是机器人设计的灵感来源。通过根据动物蓝图进行设计，工程师们可以创造出能够行走、跑步、爬行、游泳甚至飞行的机器人系统。然而，即使在过去的几十年里机器人技术取得了进步，机器人系统仍然无法达到生物动物的许多能力。现有机器人与动物同类机器人的一个关键区别是，生物系统由柔软、适应性强的材料组成，包括用于驱动的肌肉和用于控制的神经元。这项职业奖调查了如何使用活肌肉为生物混合机器人制造健壮、适应性强的执行器，这些执行器如何适应运动，以及如何控制具有活神经元的生物混合机器人。此外，这一职业奖项还支持教育和外展计划，以改善机器人和STEM专业不同学生和教师的招聘和留住。将根据研究成果开发可获得的适合年龄的教育材料，向初中和高中教师提供，并将其整合到生物灵感机器人研究生课程中。研究团队将举办虚拟和面对面的推广活动，向学生介绍生物灵感和生物混合机器人。代表人数不足的本科生将被招募参加暑期生物混合机器人和建模方面的研究体验。最后，研究人员将推广招聘和留住机器人女教员的工具。这项为期5年的职业计划将使生物执行器能够通过肌腱状接口与一系列机器人结构连接，用于生物执行器控制的生物启发神经网络，以及执行生物混合机器人的基本“编程”的能力。生物混合机器人直接利用活组织作为可再生的工程材料。特别是，基于肌肉的生物执行器具有自我修复、顺应性和适应负载的特点。到目前为止，大多数生物杂化研究都集中在生物材料作为系统的单个组件上，但需要对健壮的生物执行器和生物控制网络进行集成设计、制造和编程，以提高生物杂化机器人的性能和扩大其适用性。为了满足这一需求，这个职业项目将(1)通过创建嵌入式生物兼容接口来实现广泛的机器人外围设备的自适应生物致动，(2)建模和制造简单的生物神经网络来控制生物致动器，以及(3)培训集成的生物致动器和生物神经网络。提出的研究方法不仅将导致生物驱动和控制方面的进步，而且还将专门专注于集成生物混合机器人的开发。可编程的生物混合机器人在医学上有应用，小规模的生物兼容系统可以用作自启动支架或医疗植入物，或者用作神经肌肉组织的功能组件-芯片上的药物筛选和神经科学。所提出的研究为解决生物混合机器人的未来挑战奠定了基础，包括将不同的传感模式集成到生物混合机器人系统中，了解具体化对神经肌肉控制电路的影响，以及研究分布式生物混合驱动系统中的涌现动力学。这份职业建议书中的研究方法将与教育和推广计划相结合，以(1)将神经肌肉建模纳入生物混合机器人课程，(2)通过生物混合机器人体验提高不同学生在机器人学中的留存，以及(3)建立工具，提高机器人女教师的可见度，以提高保留率。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。

Animals are often a source of inspiration in robotic design. By designing from animal blueprints, engineers can create robotic systems capable of walking, running, crawling, swimming, and even flying. However, even with the advances in robotics over the past decades, robotic systems still fall short of many of the capabilities seen in biological animals. One key difference between existing robots and their animal counterparts is that biological systems are made up of soft, adaptable materials, including muscles for actuation and neurons for control. This CAREER award investigates how to fabricate robust, adaptable actuators for biohybrid robots using living muscle, how these actuators adapt to exercise, and how to control biohybrid robots with living neurons. Additionally, this CAREER award supports educational and outreach initiatives to improve recruitment and retention of diverse students and faculty in robotics and STEM. Accessible age-appropriate educational materials based on the research outcomes will be developed, made available to middle and high school teachers, and integrated into a graduate course on Bioinspired Robotics. The research team will host virtual and in-person outreach events to introduce students to bioinspired and biohybrid robotics. Underrepresented undergraduate students will be recruited for summer research experiences in biohybrid robotics and modeling. Finally, the investigator will promote tools for recruitment and retention of women faculty in robotics. This 5-year CAREER project will result in bioactuators capable of interfacing with a range of robotic structures via tendon-like interfaces, bioinspired neural networks for bioactuator control, and the ability to perform basic ‘programming’ of biohybrid robots. Biohybrid robotics directly harnesses living tissues as renewable engineering materials. In particular, muscle-based bioactuators are self-healing, compliant, and adapt to loading. Whereas most biohybrid research to date has focused on biological materials as individual components of the system, approaches for the integrated design, fabrication, and ‘programming’ of robust bioactuators and biological control networks are needed to improve biohybrid robot performance and broaden applicability. To meet this need, this CAREER project will (1) enable adaptive bioactuation of a wide range of robotic peripheries through the creation of embedded biocompatible interfaces, (2) model and fabricate simple biological neural networks to control bioactuators, and (3) train integrated bioactuators and biological neural networks. Not only will the proposed research approach lead to advances in bioactuation and control, but it will also specifically focus on integrated biohybrid robot development. ‘Programmable’ biohybrid robots have applications in medicine where small-scale biocompatible systems could be used as self-actuating stents or medical implants, or as functional components of neuromuscular tissues-on-a-chip for drug-screening and neuroscience. The proposed research lays the foundation for addressing future challenges in biohybrid robotics, including integrating diverse sensing modalities into biohybrid robot systems, understanding the effect of embodiment on neuromuscular control circuits, and studying emergent dynamics in distributed biohybrid actuation systems. The research approach in this CAREER proposal will be integrated with an educational and outreach plan to (1) incorporate neuromuscular modeling in biohybrid robotics curriculum, (2) improve retention of diverse students in robotics through biohybrid robot experiences, and (3) build tools to improve visibility of women faculty in robotics towards improving retention.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.