The goal of our research is to give the robot environmental adaptability. As a result of pursuing accuracy, the conventional robot is rigid and sturdy, and can operate at high speed with high precision in a well-known space. In contrast, these systems have difficulty in unknown or unstructured environments. We thought that the "flexibility" of living things is the key to solve this problem for robots of the future. Living things process a variety of stimuli, act accordingly, and sometimes change their bodies to adapt to the environment. We defined the "flexibility" of a living being as its intelligence, movement, and body. Muscle cells are one of the candidate materials that enable "flexible" robots. It has been reported that myoblasts, the material of muscle cells, fuse by induction of differentiation, and their properties change depending on the growth environment. Therefore, muscle cells have not only physically flexible but also environmental adaptability. Furthermore, the advent of 3D printing technology in recent years has enabled us to freely create three-dimensional structures and has greatly contributed to the development of conventional robots. In fact, the development of an actuator composed of muscle cells (muscle-cell based actuator) with a 3D printer has been reported. On the other hand, only a part of the robot has been replaced with cells, and the production requires the knowledge and skills of some engineers, so it has not been put to practical use. Previous studies have reported that muscle cells can be used as pressure sensors. For this reason, muscle cells seem to become all the CPUs, sensors, and actuators that compose a robot. However, their hierarchical structure and performance are unclear for a muscle-cell robot. Thus, we aim to establish 4D printing technology that can embed dynamic elements (like muscle cells) into artificial objects. In this study, we defined 4D printing technology as printing technology that adds dynamic elements of cells to 3D printing.
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