Publications

The contractile nature of skeletal muscle tissue makes it especially attractive for powering biohybrid actuators. Significant efforts have been dedicated to the improvement and control of contraction force, going one step forward toward the automation of these biohybrid platforms. Herein, 3D-bioengineered skeletal muscle tissues are integrated with organic transistor-based sensors to define a soft bioactuator with real-time force monitoring capabilities. The muscle tissue is electrically stimulated while the organic sensor ensures transduction of the exerted force into an electrical signal that allows direct monitoring of the bioactuator performance. Sensor calibration is carried out to define its sensitivity at different biasing conditions: as opposed to standard, two-terminal piezoresistive devices, transistor-based strain sensors show tunable sensitivity by acting on the voltage applied to a third terminal-the gate. A complete evaluation of sensing performances is provided, demonstrating that real-time monitoring is effective under different conditions, including stimulation signal frequency and chemical modulation of the bioactuator contraction, demonstrating its potential use as a drug testing platform. In the reported results, the way is paved for a complete exploitation of organic devices in soft robotic applications and to the development of novel biohybrid machines in bioengineering and biomedicine. The integration of sensing elements in bioengineered actuators is key to obtain real-time information about their performance and further control/automation. By coupling flexible organic field-effect transistor to a skeletal muscle actuator we demonstrate the feasibility to record in real-time its contractile behavior when stimulated by electrical pulses, showing both high sensitivity absence of cross talk between stimulation and readout.image (c) 2024 WILEY-VCH GmbH

JTD Keywords: Bioengineerings, Flexible electronics, Muscle-based actuators, Organic field-effect transistors, Soft robotic

Skeletal muscle tissue represents an attractive powering component for biohybrid robots, as traditional actuators used in the soft robotic context often rely on complex mechanisms and lack scalability at small dimensions. This article proposes a monolithic biohybrid flexure mechanism actuated by a bioengineered skeletal muscle tissue. The design leverages the contractile properties of a bioengineered skeletal muscle to produce a bending motion in a monolithic, tubular mechanism made of a soft and biocompatible silicone blend. This structure integrates two cylindrical pillars that facilitate force transmission from the bioengineered muscle tissue. Performance assessments reveal excellent contractile and stable behavior upon electrical stimulation, compared to current biohybrid actuation systems, with enhanced performance as the mechanism's internal and external diameters decrease. Finite-element simulations further reveal distinct force-displacement responses in mechanisms with different flexural rigidity. This innovative, scalable, and easy-to-fabricate design represents a significant step forward in the development of novel biohybrid machines.

JTD Keywords: Bioactuator, Biohybrid robotics, Flexible skeleton, Microfabrication, Muscle contraction, Muscle tissue engineering, Soft robotic

Kidney stones are some of the most common urinary diseases, affecting 12% of the population. The high prevalence and recurrence of this disease urges the development of more targeted and effective treatment with lower side effects and less invasiveness avoiding recurrence and prolonged drug administration. Particularly for recurring stone formers, the current methods of persistent drug treatment and repetitive surgeries for stone removal are unsatisfying solutions that bring a huge burden to the patients and healthcare systems. For these reasons, a delivery strategy that provides drug administration at the disease site through active, wireless transport is urgently needed to improve urinary tract disease treatment. A wireless treatment of kidney stones is proposed with the help of flexible, magnetically steered, enzymatically active robots. These robots are designed to navigate in the urinary tract and locally dissolve the stones by action of embedded urease. The robots are made of millimeter-sized, gelatin-based polymer strips with embedded micromagnets and encapsulated urease which constantly converts urea to increase urinary pH. This study demonstrates enhanced stone dissolution and the robots' magnetic navigation through the different parts of a 3D printed human urinary tract model. A clinical ultrasound system allows real-time localization of the robots. This research proposes a less invasive and more targeted strategy for medical interventions in the urinary tract with potential to circumvent surgery in case of uric acid kidney stones, which is relevant especially in the light of high prevalence and recurrence of kidney stones.

JTD Keywords: Enzymatic, Kidney stones, Magnetic, Microrobots, Renal stones, Soft robot

This book constitutes the proceedings of the )th International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Living Machines 2020, held in Freiburg, Germany, in July 2020. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held virtually. The 32 full and 7 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 45 submissions. They deal with research on novel life-like technologies inspired by the scientific investigation of biological systems, biomimetics, and research that seeks to interface biological and artificial systems to create biohybrid systems.

JTD Keywords: Artificial intelligence, Soft robotics, Biomimetics, Insect navigation, Synthetic nervous system, Computer vision, Bio-inspired materials, Visual homing, Locomotion+, Image processing, Intelligent robots, Human-robot interaction, Machine learning, Snake robot, Mobile robots, Robotic systems, Drosophila, Robots, Sensors, Signal processing

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Living Machines 2018, held in Paris, France, in July 2018. The 40 full and 18 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 60 submissions. The theme of the conference targeted at the intersection of research on novel life-like technologies inspired by the scientific investigation of biological systems, biomimetics, and research that seeks to interface biological and artificial systems to create biohybrid systems.

JTD Keywords: Artificial neural network, Bio-actuators, Bio-robotics, Biohybrid systems, Biomimetics, Bipedal robots, Earthoworm-like robots, Robotics, Decision-making, Tactile sensing, Soft robots, Locomotion, Insects, Sensors, Actuators, Robots, Artificial intelligence, Neural networks, Motion planning, Learning algorithms