Abstract
Aplysia californica is presented as a novel source of actuator and scaffold material for biohybrid robots. Collagen isolated from the Aplysia skin has been fabricated into gels and electrocompacted scaffolds. Additionally, the I2 muscle from the Aplysia buccal mass had been isolated for use as an organic actuator. This muscle has been characterized and the maximum force was found to be 58.5 mN with a maximum muscle strain of 12 ± 3 %. Finally, a flexible 3D printed biohybrid robot has been fabricated which is powered by the I2 muscle and is capable of locomotion at 0.43 cm/min under field stimulation.
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Acknowledgments
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE-0951783 and a GAANN Fellowship (Grant No. P200A150316). This study was also funded in part by grants from the National Science Foundation (Grant No. DMR-1306665), and the National Institute of Health (Grant No. R01 AR063701). Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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Webster, V.A. et al. (2016). Aplysia Californica as a Novel Source of Material for Biohybrid Robots and Organic Machines. In: Lepora, N., Mura, A., Mangan, M., Verschure, P., Desmulliez, M., Prescott, T. (eds) Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems. Living Machines 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9793. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42417-0_33
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42417-0_33
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