Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA.
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA.
Adv Sci (Weinh). 2024 Sep;11(35):e2308619. doi: 10.1002/advs.202308619. Epub 2024 Jul 23.
Mechanotherapy has emerged as a promising treatment for tissue injury. However, existing robots for mechanotherapy are often designed on intuition, lack remote and wireless control, and have limited motion modes. Herein, through topology optimization and hybrid fabrication, wireless magneto-active soft robots are created that can achieve various modes of programmatic deformations under remote magnetic actuation and apply mechanical forces to tissues in a precise and predictable manner. These soft robots can quickly and wirelessly deform under magnetic actuation and are able to deliver compressing, stretching, shearing, and multimodal forces to the surrounding tissues. The design framework considers the hierarchical tissue-robot interaction and, therefore, can design customized soft robots for different types of tissues with varied mechanical properties. It is shown that these customized robots with different programmable motions can induce precise deformations of porcine muscle, liver, and heart tissues with excellent durability. The soft robots, the underlying design principles, and the fabrication approach provide a new avenue for developing next-generation mechanotherapy.
力学疗法已成为一种有前途的组织损伤治疗方法。然而，现有的力学疗法机器人通常是基于直觉设计的，缺乏远程无线控制，运动模式有限。在此，通过拓扑优化和混合制造，创建了无线磁活性软机器人，它们可以在远程磁激励下实现各种模式的程控变形，并以精确和可预测的方式向组织施加机械力。这些软机器人可以在磁激励下快速无线变形，并能够向周围组织传递压缩、拉伸、剪切和多模态力。该设计框架考虑了分层的组织-机器人相互作用，因此可以为具有不同机械性能的不同类型的组织设计定制的软机器人。结果表明，这些具有不同可编程运动的定制机器人可以诱导猪肌肉、肝脏和心脏组织的精确变形，具有极好的耐用性。软机器人、基础设计原则和制造方法为开发下一代力学疗法提供了新途径。
