Soft Robotic Blood Vessel Mechanism to Realize Self-Healing Function

Abstract

Soft robots have a problem that they easily punctured or torn by contact with a sharp edge due to their soft bodies made of weak materials. To solve this fundamental issue, we proposed a robotic blood vessel mechanism that enables the robot to heal their bodies themselves. This mechanism realizes the self-healing function of soft robots like blood closing and healing wounds. We have created some test pieces consists of elastomer and inner blood that reacts by two-liquid mixing. In addition, we constructed a twisted helical type vascular mechanism, which is constructed by the gel produced by two-liquid mixing. In this paper, we demonstrate the concept of the robotic blood vessel mechanism and show the results of the basic experiments.