{"title":"Machine learning, robots, and abuse of power","authors":"Robin R. Murphy","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.ads6559","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.ads6559","url":null,"abstract":"<div >The novel <i>Annie Bot</i> by Sierra Greer is a machine learning take on the domestic noir genre.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"9 94","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":26.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142320957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-25DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.ado0051
Hiroyuki Tetsuka, Samuele Gobbi, Takaaki Hatanaka, Lorenzo Pirrami, Su Ryon Shin
Biological motions of native muscle tissues rely on the nervous system to interface movement with the surrounding environment. The neural innervation of muscles, crucial for regulating movement, is the fundamental infrastructure for swiftly responding to changes in body tissue requirements. This study introduces a bioelectronic neuromuscular robot integrated with the motor nervous system through electrical synapses to evoke cardiac muscle activities and steer robotic motion. Serving as an artificial brain and wirelessly regulating selective neural activation to initiate robot fin motion, a wireless frequency multiplexing bioelectronic device is used to control the robot. Frequency multiplexing bioelectronics enables the control of the robot locomotion speed and direction by modulating the flapping of the robot fins through the wireless motor innervation of cardiac muscles. The robots demonstrated an average locomotion speed of ~0.52 ± 0.22 millimeters per second, fin-flapping frequency up to 2.0 hertz, and turning locomotion path curvature of ~0.11 ± 0.04 radians per millimeter. These systems will contribute to the expansion of biohybrid machines into the brain-to-motor frontier for developing autonomous biohybrid systems capable of advanced adaptive motor control and learning.
{"title":"Wirelessly steerable bioelectronic neuromuscular robots adapting neurocardiac junctions","authors":"Hiroyuki Tetsuka, Samuele Gobbi, Takaaki Hatanaka, Lorenzo Pirrami, Su Ryon Shin","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.ado0051","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.ado0051","url":null,"abstract":"<div >Biological motions of native muscle tissues rely on the nervous system to interface movement with the surrounding environment. The neural innervation of muscles, crucial for regulating movement, is the fundamental infrastructure for swiftly responding to changes in body tissue requirements. This study introduces a bioelectronic neuromuscular robot integrated with the motor nervous system through electrical synapses to evoke cardiac muscle activities and steer robotic motion. Serving as an artificial brain and wirelessly regulating selective neural activation to initiate robot fin motion, a wireless frequency multiplexing bioelectronic device is used to control the robot. Frequency multiplexing bioelectronics enables the control of the robot locomotion speed and direction by modulating the flapping of the robot fins through the wireless motor innervation of cardiac muscles. The robots demonstrated an average locomotion speed of ~0.52 ± 0.22 millimeters per second, fin-flapping frequency up to 2.0 hertz, and turning locomotion path curvature of ~0.11 ± 0.04 radians per millimeter. These systems will contribute to the expansion of biohybrid machines into the brain-to-motor frontier for developing autonomous biohybrid systems capable of advanced adaptive motor control and learning.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"9 94","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":26.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.science.org/doi/reader/10.1126/scirobotics.ado0051","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142320959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-25DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.ado4553
James Davies, Mai Thanh Thai, Bibhu Sharma, Trung Thien Hoang, Chi Cong Nguyen, Phuoc Thien Phan, Thao Nhu Anne Marie Vuong, Adrienne Ji, Kefan Zhu, Emanuele Nicotra, Yi-Chin Toh, Michael Stevens, Christopher Hayward, Hoang-Phuong Phan, Nigel Hamilton Lovell, Thanh Nho Do
The heart’s intricate myocardial architecture has been called the Gordian knot of anatomy, an impossible tangle of intricate muscle fibers. This complexity dictates equally complex cardiac motions that are difficult to mimic in physical systems. If these motions could be generated by a robotic system, then cardiac device testing, cardiovascular disease studies, and surgical procedure training could reduce their reliance on animal models, saving time, costs, and lives. This work introduces a bioinspired soft robotic left ventricle simulator capable of reproducing the minutiae of cardiac motion while providing physiological pressures. This device uses thin-filament artificial muscles to mimic the multilayered myocardial architecture. To demonstrate the device’s ability to follow the cardiac motions observed in the literature, we used canine myocardial strain data as input signals that were subsequently applied to each artificial myocardial layer. The device’s ability to reproduce physiological volume and pressure under healthy and heart failure conditions, as well as effective simulation of a cardiac support device, were experimentally demonstrated in a left-sided mock circulation loop. This work also has the potential to deliver faithful simulated cardiac motion for preclinical device and surgical procedure testing, with the potential to simulate patient-specific myocardial architecture and motion.
{"title":"Soft robotic artificial left ventricle simulator capable of reproducing myocardial biomechanics","authors":"James Davies, Mai Thanh Thai, Bibhu Sharma, Trung Thien Hoang, Chi Cong Nguyen, Phuoc Thien Phan, Thao Nhu Anne Marie Vuong, Adrienne Ji, Kefan Zhu, Emanuele Nicotra, Yi-Chin Toh, Michael Stevens, Christopher Hayward, Hoang-Phuong Phan, Nigel Hamilton Lovell, Thanh Nho Do","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.ado4553","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.ado4553","url":null,"abstract":"<div >The heart’s intricate myocardial architecture has been called the Gordian knot of anatomy, an impossible tangle of intricate muscle fibers. This complexity dictates equally complex cardiac motions that are difficult to mimic in physical systems. If these motions could be generated by a robotic system, then cardiac device testing, cardiovascular disease studies, and surgical procedure training could reduce their reliance on animal models, saving time, costs, and lives. This work introduces a bioinspired soft robotic left ventricle simulator capable of reproducing the minutiae of cardiac motion while providing physiological pressures. This device uses thin-filament artificial muscles to mimic the multilayered myocardial architecture. To demonstrate the device’s ability to follow the cardiac motions observed in the literature, we used canine myocardial strain data as input signals that were subsequently applied to each artificial myocardial layer. The device’s ability to reproduce physiological volume and pressure under healthy and heart failure conditions, as well as effective simulation of a cardiac support device, were experimentally demonstrated in a left-sided mock circulation loop. This work also has the potential to deliver faithful simulated cardiac motion for preclinical device and surgical procedure testing, with the potential to simulate patient-specific myocardial architecture and motion.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"9 94","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":26.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142320962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-18DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adr8282
Nikhil V. Divekar, Gray C. Thomas, Avani R. Yerva, Hannah B. Frame, Robert D. Gregg
The quadriceps are particularly susceptible to fatigue during repetitive lifting, lowering, and carrying (LLC), affecting worker performance, posture, and ultimately lower-back injury risk. Although robotic exoskeletons have been developed and optimized for specific use cases like lifting-lowering, their controllers lack the versatility or customizability to target critical muscles across many fatiguing tasks. Here, we present a task-adaptive knee exoskeleton controller that automatically modulates virtual springs, dampers, and gravity and inertia compensation to assist squatting, level walking, and ramp and stairs ascent/descent. Unlike end-to-end neural networks, the controller is composed of predictable, bounded components with interpretable parameters that are amenable to data-driven optimization for biomimetic assistance and subsequent application-specific tuning, for example, maximizing quadriceps assistance over multiterrain LLC. When deployed on a backdrivable knee exoskeleton, the assistance torques holistically reduced quadriceps effort across multiterrain LLC tasks (significantly except for level walking) in 10 human users without user-specific calibration. The exoskeleton also significantly improved fatigue-induced deficits in time-based performance and posture during repetitive lifting-lowering. Last, the system facilitated seamless task transitions and garnered a high effectiveness rating postfatigue over a multiterrain circuit. These findings indicate that this versatile control framework can target critical muscles across multiple tasks, specifically mitigating quadriceps fatigue and its deleterious effects.
{"title":"A versatile knee exoskeleton mitigates quadriceps fatigue in lifting, lowering, and carrying tasks","authors":"Nikhil V. Divekar, Gray C. Thomas, Avani R. Yerva, Hannah B. Frame, Robert D. Gregg","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.adr8282","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.adr8282","url":null,"abstract":"<div >The quadriceps are particularly susceptible to fatigue during repetitive lifting, lowering, and carrying (LLC), affecting worker performance, posture, and ultimately lower-back injury risk. Although robotic exoskeletons have been developed and optimized for specific use cases like lifting-lowering, their controllers lack the versatility or customizability to target critical muscles across many fatiguing tasks. Here, we present a task-adaptive knee exoskeleton controller that automatically modulates virtual springs, dampers, and gravity and inertia compensation to assist squatting, level walking, and ramp and stairs ascent/descent. Unlike end-to-end neural networks, the controller is composed of predictable, bounded components with interpretable parameters that are amenable to data-driven optimization for biomimetic assistance and subsequent application-specific tuning, for example, maximizing quadriceps assistance over multiterrain LLC. When deployed on a backdrivable knee exoskeleton, the assistance torques holistically reduced quadriceps effort across multiterrain LLC tasks (significantly except for level walking) in 10 human users without user-specific calibration. The exoskeleton also significantly improved fatigue-induced deficits in time-based performance and posture during repetitive lifting-lowering. Last, the system facilitated seamless task transitions and garnered a high effectiveness rating postfatigue over a multiterrain circuit. These findings indicate that this versatile control framework can target critical muscles across multiple tasks, specifically mitigating quadriceps fatigue and its deleterious effects.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"9 94","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":26.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142245152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-18DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adl3546
Zachary Yoder, Ellen H. Rumley, Ingemar Schmidt, Philipp Rothemund, Christoph Keplinger
Robots made from reconfigurable modular units feature versatility, cost efficiency, and improved sustainability compared with fixed designs. Reconfigurable modules driven by soft actuators provide adaptable actuation, safe interaction, and wide design freedom, but existing soft modules would benefit from high-speed and high-strain actuation, as well as driving methods well-suited to untethered operation. Here, we introduce a class of electrically actuated robotic modules that provide high-speed (a peak contractile strain rate of 4618% per second, 15.8-hertz bandwidth, and a peak specific power of 122 watts per kilogram), high-strain (49% contraction) actuation and that use magnets for reversible mechanical and electrical connections between neighboring modules, thereby serving as building blocks for rapidly reconfigurable and highly agile robotic systems. The actuation performance of each hexagonal electrohydraulic (HEXEL) module is enabled by a synergistic combination of soft and rigid components; a hexagonal exoskeleton of rigid plates amplifies the motion produced by soft electrohydraulic actuators and provides a mechanical structure and connection platform for reconfigurable robots composed of many modules. We characterize the actuation performance of individual HEXEL modules, present a model that captures their quasi-static force-stroke behavior, and demonstrate both a high-jumping and a fast pipe-crawling robot. Using embedded magnetic connections, we arranged multiple modules into reconfigurable robots with diverse functionality, including a high-stroke muscle, a multimodal active array, a table-top active platform, and a fast-rolling robot. We further leveraged the magnetic connections for hosting untethered, snap-on driving electronics, together highlighting the promise of HEXEL modules for creating rapidly reconfigurable high-speed robots.
{"title":"Hexagonal electrohydraulic modules for rapidly reconfigurable high-speed robots","authors":"Zachary Yoder, Ellen H. Rumley, Ingemar Schmidt, Philipp Rothemund, Christoph Keplinger","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.adl3546","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.adl3546","url":null,"abstract":"<div >Robots made from reconfigurable modular units feature versatility, cost efficiency, and improved sustainability compared with fixed designs. Reconfigurable modules driven by soft actuators provide adaptable actuation, safe interaction, and wide design freedom, but existing soft modules would benefit from high-speed and high-strain actuation, as well as driving methods well-suited to untethered operation. Here, we introduce a class of electrically actuated robotic modules that provide high-speed (a peak contractile strain rate of 4618% per second, 15.8-hertz bandwidth, and a peak specific power of 122 watts per kilogram), high-strain (49% contraction) actuation and that use magnets for reversible mechanical and electrical connections between neighboring modules, thereby serving as building blocks for rapidly reconfigurable and highly agile robotic systems. The actuation performance of each hexagonal electrohydraulic (HEXEL) module is enabled by a synergistic combination of soft and rigid components; a hexagonal exoskeleton of rigid plates amplifies the motion produced by soft electrohydraulic actuators and provides a mechanical structure and connection platform for reconfigurable robots composed of many modules. We characterize the actuation performance of individual HEXEL modules, present a model that captures their quasi-static force-stroke behavior, and demonstrate both a high-jumping and a fast pipe-crawling robot. Using embedded magnetic connections, we arranged multiple modules into reconfigurable robots with diverse functionality, including a high-stroke muscle, a multimodal active array, a table-top active platform, and a fast-rolling robot. We further leveraged the magnetic connections for hosting untethered, snap-on driving electronics, together highlighting the promise of HEXEL modules for creating rapidly reconfigurable high-speed robots.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"9 94","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":26.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142245153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-18DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adt0930
Melisa Yashinski
A socially assistive robot can administer in-home neuropsychological tests for cognitive monitoring of older adults.
社交辅助机器人可在家中进行神经心理学测试,以监测老年人的认知能力。
{"title":"Social robot for at-home cognitive monitoring","authors":"Melisa Yashinski","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.adt0930","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.adt0930","url":null,"abstract":"<div >A socially assistive robot can administer in-home neuropsychological tests for cognitive monitoring of older adults.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"9 94","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":26.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142245157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-11DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adn6844
Stephanie J. Woodman, Dylan S. Shah, Melanie Landesberg, Anjali Agrawala, Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio
To achieve real-world functionality, robots must have the ability to carry out decision-making computations. However, soft robots stretch and therefore need a solution other than rigid computers. Examples of embedding computing capacity into soft robots currently include appending rigid printed circuit boards to the robot, integrating soft logic gates, and exploiting material responses for material-embedded computation. Although promising, these approaches introduce limitations such as rigidity, tethers, or low logic gate density. The field of stretchable electronics has sought to solve these challenges, but a complete pipeline for direct integration of single-board computers, microcontrollers, and other complex circuitry into soft robots has remained elusive. We present a generalized method to translate any complex two-layer circuit into a soft, stretchable form. This enabled the creation of stretchable single-board microcontrollers (including Arduinos) and other commercial circuits (including SparkFun circuits), without design simplifications. As demonstrations of the method’s utility, we embedded highly stretchable (>300% strain) Arduino Pro Minis into the bodies of multiple soft robots. This makes use of otherwise inert structural material, fulfilling the promise of the stretchable electronic field to integrate state-of-the-art computational power into robust, stretchable systems during active use.
为了实现真实世界的功能,机器人必须具备进行决策计算的能力。然而,软体机器人具有伸缩性,因此需要刚性计算机以外的解决方案。目前,将计算能力嵌入软体机器人的例子包括在机器人上附加刚性印刷电路板、集成软逻辑门,以及利用材料反应进行材料嵌入式计算。这些方法虽然前景广阔,但也存在一些限制,如刚性、系绳或逻辑门密度低。可拉伸电子学领域一直在努力解决这些难题,但将单板计算机、微控制器和其他复杂电路直接集成到软体机器人中的完整流水线却一直未能实现。我们提出了一种通用方法,可将任何复杂的双层电路转化为柔软、可拉伸的形式。这样就能在不简化设计的情况下,制作出可拉伸的单板微控制器(包括 Arduinos)和其他商用电路(包括 SparkFun 电路)。为了证明这种方法的实用性,我们将高度可拉伸(300% 应变)的 Arduino Pro Minis 嵌入到多个软体机器人的身体中。这就利用了原本惰性的结构材料,实现了可拉伸电子领域的承诺,即在主动使用过程中将最先进的计算能力集成到坚固耐用的可拉伸系统中。
{"title":"Stretchable Arduinos embedded in soft robots","authors":"Stephanie J. Woodman, Dylan S. Shah, Melanie Landesberg, Anjali Agrawala, Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.adn6844","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.adn6844","url":null,"abstract":"<div >To achieve real-world functionality, robots must have the ability to carry out decision-making computations. However, soft robots stretch and therefore need a solution other than rigid computers. Examples of embedding computing capacity into soft robots currently include appending rigid printed circuit boards to the robot, integrating soft logic gates, and exploiting material responses for material-embedded computation. Although promising, these approaches introduce limitations such as rigidity, tethers, or low logic gate density. The field of stretchable electronics has sought to solve these challenges, but a complete pipeline for direct integration of single-board computers, microcontrollers, and other complex circuitry into soft robots has remained elusive. We present a generalized method to translate any complex two-layer circuit into a soft, stretchable form. This enabled the creation of stretchable single-board microcontrollers (including Arduinos) and other commercial circuits (including SparkFun circuits), without design simplifications. As demonstrations of the method’s utility, we embedded highly stretchable (>300% strain) Arduino Pro Minis into the bodies of multiple soft robots. This makes use of otherwise inert structural material, fulfilling the promise of the stretchable electronic field to integrate state-of-the-art computational power into robust, stretchable systems during active use.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"9 94","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":26.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142170411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-11DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adp3260
Marta Gherardini, Valerio Ianniciello, Federico Masiero, Flavia Paggetti, Daniele D’Accolti, Eliana La Frazia, Olimpia Mani, Stefania Dalise, Katarina Dejanovic, Noemi Fragapane, Luca Maggiani, Edoardo Ipponi, Marco Controzzi, Manuela Nicastro, Carmelo Chisari, Lorenzo Andreani, Christian Cipriani
The loss of a hand disrupts the sophisticated neural pathways between the brain and the hand, severely affecting the level of independence of the patient and the ability to carry out daily work and social activities. Recent years have witnessed a rapid evolution of surgical techniques and technologies aimed at restoring dexterous motor functions akin to those of the human hand through bionic solutions, mainly relying on probing of electrical signals from the residual nerves and muscles. Here, we report the clinical implementation of an interface aimed at achieving this goal by exploiting muscle deformation, sensed through passive magnetic implants: the myokinetic interface. One participant with a transradial amputation received an implantation of six permanent magnets in three muscles of the residual limb. A truly self-contained myokinetic prosthetic arm embedding all hardware components and the battery within the prosthetic socket was developed. By retrieving muscle deformation caused by voluntary contraction through magnet localization, we were able to control in real time a dexterous robotic hand following both a direct control strategy and a pattern recognition approach. In just 6 weeks, the participant successfully completed a series of functional tests, achieving scores similar to those achieved when using myoelectric controllers, a standard-of-care solution, with comparable physical and mental workloads. This experience raised conceptual and technical limits of the interface, which nevertheless pave the way for further investigations in a partially unexplored field. This study also demonstrates a viable possibility for intuitively interfacing humans with robotic technologies.
{"title":"Restoration of grasping in an upper limb amputee using the myokinetic prosthesis with implanted magnets","authors":"Marta Gherardini, Valerio Ianniciello, Federico Masiero, Flavia Paggetti, Daniele D’Accolti, Eliana La Frazia, Olimpia Mani, Stefania Dalise, Katarina Dejanovic, Noemi Fragapane, Luca Maggiani, Edoardo Ipponi, Marco Controzzi, Manuela Nicastro, Carmelo Chisari, Lorenzo Andreani, Christian Cipriani","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.adp3260","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.adp3260","url":null,"abstract":"<div >The loss of a hand disrupts the sophisticated neural pathways between the brain and the hand, severely affecting the level of independence of the patient and the ability to carry out daily work and social activities. Recent years have witnessed a rapid evolution of surgical techniques and technologies aimed at restoring dexterous motor functions akin to those of the human hand through bionic solutions, mainly relying on probing of electrical signals from the residual nerves and muscles. Here, we report the clinical implementation of an interface aimed at achieving this goal by exploiting muscle deformation, sensed through passive magnetic implants: the myokinetic interface. One participant with a transradial amputation received an implantation of six permanent magnets in three muscles of the residual limb. A truly self-contained myokinetic prosthetic arm embedding all hardware components and the battery within the prosthetic socket was developed. By retrieving muscle deformation caused by voluntary contraction through magnet localization, we were able to control in real time a dexterous robotic hand following both a direct control strategy and a pattern recognition approach. In just 6 weeks, the participant successfully completed a series of functional tests, achieving scores similar to those achieved when using myoelectric controllers, a standard-of-care solution, with comparable physical and mental workloads. This experience raised conceptual and technical limits of the interface, which nevertheless pave the way for further investigations in a partially unexplored field. This study also demonstrates a viable possibility for intuitively interfacing humans with robotic technologies.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"9 94","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":26.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.science.org/doi/reader/10.1126/scirobotics.adp3260","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142170430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-28DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adk8019
Anand Kumar Mishra, Jaeseok Kim, Hannah Baghdadi, Bruce R. Johnson, Kathie T. Hodge, Robert F. Shepherd
Living tissues are still far from being used as practical components in biohybrid robots because of limitations in life span, sensitivity to environmental factors, and stringent culture procedures. Here, we introduce fungal mycelia as an easy-to-use and robust living component in biohybrid robots. We constructed two biohybrid robots that use the electrophysiological activity of living mycelia to control their artificial actuators. The mycelia sense their environment and issue action potential–like spiking voltages as control signals to the motors and valves of the robots that we designed and built. The paper highlights two key innovations: first, a vibration- and electromagnetic interference–shielded mycelium electrical interface that allows for stable, long-term electrophysiological bioelectric recordings during untethered, mobile operation; second, a control architecture for robots inspired by neural central pattern generators, incorporating rhythmic patterns of positive and negative spikes from the living mycelia. We used these signals to control a walking soft robot as well as a wheeled hard one. We also demonstrated the use of mycelia to respond to environmental cues by using ultraviolet light stimulation to augment the robots’ gaits.
{"title":"Sensorimotor control of robots mediated by electrophysiological measurements of fungal mycelia","authors":"Anand Kumar Mishra, Jaeseok Kim, Hannah Baghdadi, Bruce R. Johnson, Kathie T. Hodge, Robert F. Shepherd","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.adk8019","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.adk8019","url":null,"abstract":"<div >Living tissues are still far from being used as practical components in biohybrid robots because of limitations in life span, sensitivity to environmental factors, and stringent culture procedures. Here, we introduce fungal mycelia as an easy-to-use and robust living component in biohybrid robots. We constructed two biohybrid robots that use the electrophysiological activity of living mycelia to control their artificial actuators. The mycelia sense their environment and issue action potential–like spiking voltages as control signals to the motors and valves of the robots that we designed and built. The paper highlights two key innovations: first, a vibration- and electromagnetic interference–shielded mycelium electrical interface that allows for stable, long-term electrophysiological bioelectric recordings during untethered, mobile operation; second, a control architecture for robots inspired by neural central pattern generators, incorporating rhythmic patterns of positive and negative spikes from the living mycelia. We used these signals to control a walking soft robot as well as a wheeled hard one. We also demonstrated the use of mycelia to respond to environmental cues by using ultraviolet light stimulation to augment the robots’ gaits.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"9 93","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":26.1,"publicationDate":"2024-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142086441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}