In the past few decades, robotics research has witnessed an increasingly high interest in miniaturized, intelligent, and integrated robots. The imperative component of a robot is the actuator that determines its performance. Although traditional rigid drives such as motors and gas engines have shown great prevalence in most macroscale circumstances, the reduction of these drives to the millimeter or even lower scale results in a significant increase in manufacturing difficulty accompanied by a remarkable performance decline. Biohybrid robots driven by living cells can be a potential solution to overcome these drawbacks by benefiting from the intrinsic microscale self-assembly of living tissues and high energy efficiency, which, among other unprecedented properties, also feature flexibility, self-repair, and even multiple degrees of freedom. This paper systematically reviews the development of biohybrid robots. First, the development of biological flexible drivers is introduced while emphasizing on their advantages over traditional drivers. Second, up-to-date works regarding biohybrid robots are reviewed in detail from three aspects: biological driving sources, actuator materials, and structures with associated control methodologies. Finally, the potential future applications and major challenges of biohybrid robots are explored. Graphic

The impact of COVID-19 has rendered medical technology an important factor to maintain social stability and economic increase, where biomedicine has experienced rapid development and played a crucial part in fighting off the pandemic. Conductive hydrogels (CHs) are three-dimensional (3D) structured gels with excellent electrical conductivity and biocompatibility, which are very suitable for biomedical applications. CHs can mimic innate tissue’s physical, chemical, and biological properties, which allows them to provide environmental conditions and structural stability for cell growth and serve as efficient delivery substrates for bioactive molecules. The customizability of CHs also allows additional functionality to be designed for different requirements in biomedical applications. This review introduces the basic functional characteristics and materials for preparing CHs and elaborates on their synthetic techniques. The development and applications of CHs in the field of biomedicine are highlighted, including regenerative medicine, artificial organs, biosensors, drug delivery systems, and some other application scenarios. Finally, this review discusses the future applications of CHs in the field of biomedicine. In summary, the current design and development of CHs extend their prospects for functioning as an intelligent and complex system in diverse biomedical applications.

Constrained layer dampers (CLD) are in widespread use for passive vibration damping, in applications including aerospace structures. However, the introducing of the damping layer can reduce the stiffness of the sandwich structures. A viscoelastic material filling (VMF) is chosen to balance structural and vibrational performance of lattice truss in this work. The recently brought forward 3D Kagome truss with face sheet was manufactured by selective laser sintering technology and the thermosetting polyurethane was chosen as the viscoelastic filling material. A novel complex modal analysis finite element method for Hybrid composite lattice truss sandwich is introduced in this paper. Dynamic analysis experiment results show that the VMF method is found to be effective in reducing the vibration amplitude and it has the potential for band-gap design. The VMF method can provide high stiffness at low mass and considerable vibrational performance at low cost and it can be considered as a general vibration design method in lattice truss manufacture.

Amphibious robots are becoming increasingly important for civilian, scientific, and environmental missions. They are widely used in disaster rescue, ecosys

Exploring human hand fundamental biomechanical features and exploiting them to robotic hands have been proven to be an effective approach to enhancing artificial hands' performance, especially when interacting with various objects in dynamic unstructured environments. In this article, a bioinspired anthropomorphic robotic finger is first proposed, which embeds human finger musculoskeletal features in the design. Based on this design, three human-finger-like biomechanical advantages are systematically investigated and embodied in the bioinspired robotic finger. This article for the first time derives, presents, and experimentally verifies the mathematical models for the variable stiffness of finger ligamentous joints and self-adaptive morphing mechanism of finger flexible tendon sheaths, and validates and compares the influence of the reticular and linear extensor morphologies on fingertip feasible forces in three-dimensional (3-D) space. In this Part I of the article, two of the biomechanical properties, i.e., joint stiffness generated by the ligamentous joint of the finger, and fingertip feasible force space influenced by the reticular extensor mechanism are systematically investigated through theoretical modeling and experimental verification. Correspondingly, two biomechanical advantages were found, i.e., the ligamentous joint of the finger could provide anisotropic variable joint stiffness, enhancing the adaptivity, dexterity, and stability of fingers; and a reticular extensor mechanism could enlarge the fingertip feasible force space in 3-D space by 30.9% theoretically and 146.4% experimentally on average compared with the linear extensor, contributing to enrich force conditions during interactions. The third biomechanical advantage, i.e., fingertip force–velocity workspace can be augmented through the flexible tendon sheath, and grasping tests for a robotic hand designed with the aforementioned advantages are presented in Part II of this article.