Research Progress of Muscle-driven Robots Based on Living Tissues

A muscle-driven robot based on living tissues is deeply integrated with the traditional electromechanical system. Compared with the traditional rigid and the non-biological flexible material driving robot at millimeter scale, muscle-driven robots have the advantages of micro-scale, high power density, biocompatibility, etc. Therefore, they can play an important role in biomedicine, battlefield reconnaissance and other fields, which have attracted widespread interest globally. The current research progress, potential applications, challenges and solutions of muscle-driven robots will be summarized and discussed here. Firstly, the muscle tissue structure and stress mechanism of living cells were described. On this basis, two design ideas of artificial biological muscle-driven robot composed of living cells and non-biological flexible materials and real biological muscle-driven robot directly obtained from living body are summarized. The different control strategies of muscle-driven robots and their advantages and disadvantages are systematically summarized. Finally, its potential application and the main challenges it encounters are discussed and summarized, and the corresponding possible solutions are suggested, which can provide guidance for the development and performance improvements of the follow-up muscle-driven robots. © 2022 Editorial Office of Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering. All rights reserved.