Serially-Arranged Biohybrid Muscle Ring Actuators for Large-Scale Bending Motion

This paper describes the serially arranged biohybrid actuators with self-joint mechanism for large-scale bending motions. The unit actuator is composed of two circle hook-shaped anchors and a muscle ring actuator, allowing the anchor to contact with ends of the muscle at optimized positions during various muscle contraction. Our proposed mechanism of this actuator achieved larger contractile motion with small initial shrinkage than that of conventional mechanisms. Also, we show the superiority of this mechanism and demonstrate large-scale flexion and joint movements achieved by serial arrangement of the actuators. We believe that our proposed mechanism can be applied to large-scale soft grippers and articulated robots.