Animatronic robots that simulate the lively and realistic motions of creatures can be excellent robotic platforms for social interaction with people. In particular, the robot head is a very important part of expressing various emotions and generating human-friendly and aesthetic impressions. This article presents Ray, a new type of audio-animatronic robot head. All the mechanical structure of the robot is built in one step by 3-D printing and has multiple layers expressing the overall shape of a human head and important features such as eyes, nose, mouth, and chin. This simple, lightweight structure and the separatetendon-based actuation system underneath allow for smooth, fast motions of the robot. We also develop an audio-driven motion generation module that automatically synthesizes natural and rhythmic motions of the head and mouth based on the given audio. The developed robot platform is used for various applications, for example, as a talking robot, robot singer, and robot MC. We expect this research opens up a new paradigm and application possibilities for minimally designed audio-animatronic robots.

We develop a miniature suction-gripper with the goal to realize the novel robotic surgical instrument that can grip slippery and flexible peripheral nerves. In developing the instrument, we place a priority on devising the method that can robustly grip the nerve bundles during the surgical operation for the peripheral nerve. Also, we concentrate to investigate the working principle being able to minimize nerve damages that might be caused when manipulating the nerve. In this study, as the most suitable method to achieve the goal, we scheme to utilize the suction mechanism. Because it can non-invasively grip the nerve based on negative pressure, no external force is applied to the nervous tissues. Therefore the peripheral nerve can be manipulated without serious nerve damage (e.g. crush injury and stretch injury). To improve the gripping ability of the proposed suction gripper, two different types of microneedle arrays are applied to the suction-tips: passive-microneedle (PMN) arrays and active-microneedle (AMN) arrays. Since the most outer membrane of the nerve can be anchored by the penetrated PMN and AMN, the gripper can grip the nerve more robustly. The designed suction-gripper is fabricated as a functional prototype, and its working performances are assessed with in-vitro and in-vivo animal experiments. The experimental results well demonstrate the practical effectiveness of the proposed method and its applicability to the neurosurgical robot for the peripheral nerve.

This paper presents preliminary results of a handheld device to assist the insertion of intra-fascicular planar electrodes into a peripheral nervous system. The developed device consists of two units, a nerve holder and an electrode inserter. We introduce design considerations, features, and underlying mechanisms of the device. User tests and animal experiments show that users can easily and accurately adjust the insertion position and direction of nerve electrodes while manipulating the device in 3D, and that planar electrodes are successfully inserted into sciatic nerves of rats. We hope that the proposed device will help neural engineering researchers and scientists to simplify the surgical process and produce consistent experimental results.

This paper describes additive self-folding, an origami-inspired rapid fabrication approach for creating actuatable compliant structures. Recent work in 3-D printing and other rapid fabrication processes have mostly focused on rigid objects or objects that can achieve small deformations. In contrast, soft robots often require elastic materials and large amounts of movement. Additive self-folding is a process that involves cutting slices of a 3-D object in a long strip and then pleat folding them into a likeness of the original model. The zigzag pattern for folding enables large bending movements that can be actuated and controlled. Gaps between slices in the folded model can be designed to provide larger deformations or higher shape accuracy. We advance existing planar fabrication and self-folding techniques to automate the fabrication process, enabling highly compliant structures with complex 3-D geometries to be designed and fabricated within a few hours. We describe this process in this paper and provide algorithms for converting 3-D meshes into additive self-folding designs. The designs can be rapidly instrumented for global control using magnetic fields or tendon-driven for local bending. We also describe how the resulting structures can be modeled and their responses to tendon-driven control predicted. We test our design and fabrication methods on three models (a bunny, a tuna fish, and a starfish) and demonstrate the method's potential for actuation by actuating the tuna fish and starfish models using tendons and magnetic control.

We present a new teleoperated micromanipulation system in which all units of the system, wearable user interface devices and a slave micromanipulator, are manufactured by engraving, cutting, and folding two-dimensional materials. The designed manipulation system employs a simple hydraulic mechanism consisting of pairs of syringes that have different diameters, which allows for motion reduction and physical interaction between the master and the slave. As a result, users can precisely manipulate micro-objects without tremor, which was previously difficult with bare hands. This paper presents design considerations and features fabrication methods, performance metrics of this creative manipulation system, and a range of high-level micromanipulation abilities such as pick-and-place, microseparation, and three-dimensional microassembly. Highlighting rapid design and fabrication of a low-cost precision micromanipulation system, this paper proposes new applications of folded machines to wearable robots and microrobotics.

Computational thinking is an important part of a modern education, and robotics provides a powerful tool for teaching programming logic in an interactive and engaging way. The robot garden presented in this paper is a distributed multi-robot system capable of running autonomously or under user control from a simple graphical interface. Over 100 origami flowers are actuated with LEDs and printed pouch motors, and are deployed in a modular array around additional swimming and crawling folded robots. The garden integrates state-of-the-art rapid design and fabrication technologies with distributed systems software techniques to create a scalable swarm in which robots can be controlled individually or as a group. The garden can be used to teach basic algorithmic concepts through its distributed algorithm demonstration capabilities and can teach programming concepts through its education-oriented user interface.

Origami-engineering is an emerging design and manufacturing technology for creating 3-D robotic systems using 2-D designs. We present a new origami-inspired tele-micromanipulation system manufactured by printing and folding. The developed micromanipulation system consists of two miniature machines, wearable user interface devices and a multi degree-of-freedom slave manipulator. A simple hydraulic system using syringes allows motion reduction and force transmission between the master and the slave. This paper introduces how to design and rapidly prototype these devices, and, finally, demonstrate different micromanipulation abilities such as 2-D trajectory following, pick-and-place, and 3-D micro-assembly. Highlighting rapid design and fabrication of a low-cost high performance origami-based tele-micromanipulation system, this paper proposes new applications of origami-inspired printable robots to wearable robots, micro-robotics and tele-operation.

Untethered robots miniaturized to the length scale of millimeter and below attract growing attention for the prospect of transforming many aspects of health care and bioengineering. As the robot size goes down to the order of a single cell, previously inaccessible body sites would become available for high-resolution in situ and in vivo manipulations. This unprecedented direct access would enable an extensive range of minimally invasive medical operations. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of the current advances in biomedical untethered mobile milli/microrobots. We put a special emphasis on the potential impacts of biomedical microrobots in the near future. Finally, we discuss the existing challenges and emerging concepts associated with designing such a miniaturized robot for operation inside a biological environment for biomedical applications.

This paper proposes a soft self-assembling modular matter, which is called SoftCubes where serially connected soft cubes can be extremely stretched by external tension and has a self-recovery capability to an originally designed 3-D shape. The developed soft modular matter has three main design features. First, entire modules of the 3-D assembled shape are serially connected. Such a structure allows all the modules to be disassembled and stretched by external tension. Second, the modules are made of soft stretchable elastomer. The soft-body of the modules provides a high flexibility and an extreme shape adaptation capability with the disassembled modules. Also, if the external tension is removed, the original 3-D shape is self-recovered by the elastic restoring force of soft-bodied modules. Finally, small permanent magnets are embedded in each module. The magnetic attraction between modules makes them self-assembled and precisely aligned with the neighbor modules in a lattice structure. The paper presents various analyses, simulations, and demonstrations about soft modular matter's shape reconfiguration to 1-D and self-recovery to 3-D. The designed soft modular matter could enable new applications as injectable medical implants and implantable modular devices.

In this paper, we present a 3-D localization method for a magnetically actuated soft capsule endoscope (MASCE). The proposed localization scheme consists of three steps. First, MASCE is oriented to be coaxially aligned with an external permanent magnet (EPM). Second, MASCE is axially contracted by the enhanced magnetic attraction of the approaching EPM. Third, MASCE recovers its initial shape by the retracting EPM as the magnetic attraction weakens. The combination of the estimated direction in the coaxial alignment step and the estimated distance in the shape deformation (recovery) step provides the position of MASCE in 3-D. It is experimentally shown that the proposed localization method could provide 2.0-3.7 mm of distance error in 3-D. This study also introduces two new applications of the proposed localization method. First, based on the trace of contact points between the MASCE and the surface of the stomach, the 3-D geometrical model of a synthetic stomach was reconstructed. Next, the relative tissue compliance at each local contact point in the stomach was characterized by measuring the local tissue deformation at each point due to the preloading force. Finally, the characterized relative tissue compliance parameter was mapped onto the geometrical model of the stomach toward future use in disease diagnosis.

This paper proposes a magnetically actuated soft capsule endoscope (MASCE) as a tetherless miniature mobile robot platform for diagnostic and therapeutic medical applications inside the stomach. Two embedded internal permanent magnets and a large external magnet are used to actuate the robot remotely. The proposed MASCE has three novel features. First, its outside body is made of soft elastomer-based compliant structures. Such compliant structures can deform passively during the robot-tissue contact interactions, which makes the device safer and less invasive. Next, it can be actively deformed in the axial direction by using external magnetic actuation, which provides an extra degree of freedom that enables various advanced functions such as axial position control, drug releasing, drug injection, or biopsy. Finally, it navigates in three dimensions by rolling on the stomach surface as a new surface locomotion method inside the stomach. Here, the external attractive magnetic force is used to anchor the robot on a desired location, and the external magnetic torque is used to roll it to another location, which provides a stable, continuous, and controllable motion. The paper presents design and fabrication methods for the compliant structures of the robot with its axial deformation and position control capability. Rolling-based surface locomotion of the robot using external magnetic torques is modeled, and its feasibility is tested and verified on a synthetic stomach surface by using a magnetically actuated capsule endoscope prototype.

In this paper, we present a shape-programmable magnetically actuated soft capsule robot for semi-implantable drug delivery applications. The shape of the proposed soft capsule is changed by an external magnetic field. To change the robot shape by an external permanent magnet, the relevant soft robot design features and required conditions are investigated using simulations and experiments. If the magnetic field is increased above a critical value, the capsule collapses to a sphere-like stable shape, which keeps the capsule inside the stomach all the time, and it cannot move to the duodenum by gastric peristalsis. We conducted experiments inside a synthetic stomach-like membrane to investigate how much tissue stress is induced by the soft capsule under emulated gastric peristalsis to show that the capsule induces no pain in the stomach and can sustain its spherical shape against external forces. Such a soft capsule can be used to release drugs, which can be contained on its body parts or inside a reservoir, while staying in the stomach. After depletion of the drug, a controlled rolling motion using the external magnetic field is proposed to recover the initial cylindrical shape. Then, the capsule can move into the duodenum by peristalsis and is discharged through the anus.

In this paper, we propose a compliant and tetherless magnetic capsule endoscopic robot. The proposed capsule robot has two key features. First, it has one extra degree of freedom axial contraction capability to perform additional tasks such as a drug releasing, a drug injection, or a biopsy. Also, design features of the magnetically deformed capsule robot are introduced. Its characteristic deformation curve, which was measured using an indentation setup, presents not only the deformation behavior of the magnetic capsule robot but also considerations in the capsule design process. Next, by implementing a magnetically actuated rolling locomotion scheme, the capsule can be controlled externally using a permanent magnet. The proposed magnetic capsule robot is anchored on a tissue wall by the magnetic attraction and rotated by a magnetic torque. This behavior allows a stable locomotion of the magnetic capsule robot and its orientation is controllable during locomotion. To verify the feasibility of proposed locomotion method and the compliant capsule's shape deformation, the magnetic capsule robot was actuated in a synthetic stomach model. The experimental results show that locomotion behavior of the capsule is stable and a successful tracking performance of the proposed magnetic actuation method; average distance gap between the capsule and the external magnet was only 20% of the capsule's body length. Such a soft and tetherless capsule robot can potentially enable minimally invasive diagnostic and treatment applications for stomach diseases.

Most researches on internal mobile robot are going on based on the invasive clamping functions which generate the propulsion through a direct contact with organic tubes. This paper proposes a novel locomotion mechanism, which moves fundamentally based on a spiral profile and generates the additional force by transferring the rotational movement to the linear movement. The essence of proposed mobile microrobot is development of a rotation-linear movement interface mechanism and a non-invasive clamping function. This paper introduces the working principle and analyzes the behavior of mobile robot. Finally we validate the performance of robot as non-invasive locomotion mechanism by experiments.