Living Skin as a Self-Repairable Covering Material for Robots

Abstract

Skin-equivalent, a living skin model made from human cells, has the potential to be the self-healing coverage material for robots. In this paper, a three-joint robotic finger covered with living human dermal tissue was created. Furthermore, the damaged dermis-equivalent covering the robotic finger was repaired by applying a collagen sheet to the wounded site. We observed the repair of the planar dermis and found that the cells migrated into the collagen patch. We also conducted tensile tests to confirm the recovery after the repair. Finally, we demonstrated the repair of the wounded dermis-equivalent covering the robotic finger, therefore showing the practicality of dermis-equivalent as a repairable coverage material.