Today Harvard SEAS published the press release of our most recent collaboration with the Harvard Biodesign Lab: “The heart is not alone. The human body is replete with examples of soft muscular systems that bend, twist, extend, and flex in complex ways. Engineers have long sought to design robotic systems with the requisite actuation systems that can perform similar tasks, but these have fallen short”.
We have developed a low-cost, programmable, soft actuated material that gives renewed hope to the mission. We have demonstrated the material’s potential by using it to replicate the biological motion of the heart, and also developed a matching 3D computer model of it, as reported in an article in Advanced Materials and in Nature Materials News & Views and Research Highlight.