Two University of Oxford
biomedical researchers are calling for robots to be built with real human
tissue, and they say the technology is there if we only choose to develop it. Right
now, tissue engineering relies on bioreactors to grow sheets of cells. These
machines often look like large fish tanks, filled with a rich soup of nutrients
and chemicals that cells need to grow on a specialized trellis. The problem, is
that bioreactors currently fail to mimic the real mechanical environment for
cells. In other words, human cells in muscles and tendons grow while being
stretched and moved around on our skeletons. Without experiencing these natural
stresses, the tissue grafts produced by researchers often have a broad range of
structural problems and low cell counts. That's where robots come in. The
researchers propose a humanoid-bioreactor system with structures, dimensions,
and mechanics similar to those of the human body.
As the robot interacted with its
environment, tissues growing on its body would receive the typical strains and
twists that they would if they grew on an actual human. The result would be
healthy tissue, grown for the exact area on the body it was destined to
replace. Researchers note that this would be especially helpful for bone-tendon-muscle
grafts, because failure during healing often occurs at the interface between
tissues. What would this humanoid-bioreactor system look like? It could
possibly be built on top of a humanoid robot with soft robotics muscles made
from electroactive polymers, and the growing muscles could piggyback on those
to get their exercise. It would also need to be covered in soft, stretchable
sensors to monitor the health of the growing tissues. The result might look a
bit like the University of Tokyo's Kenshiro robot, whose actuators make
realistically human movements.
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