Self-healing Cell Tactile Sensor Fabricated Using Ultraflexible Printed Electrodes

Abstract

We used cells, which are the units that make up a living body, as building blocks to design a biomachine hybrid system and develop a tactile sensor that uses living cells as sensor receptors. We fabricated a novel cell tactile sensor with the electrodes formed using printed electronics technology. This sensor comprises elastic electrodes mounted on a soft material to acquire tactile information; similar to a conventional cell tactile sensor, it acquires signals through mechanical stimulation. Further, self-organization of cells can be induced, and logical processing such as selective responses to stimuli can be performed directly by the physical system, without any coding using programming languages. The proposed novel cell tactile sensor that uses printed electrodes is small enough to mount on robots. Interestingly, we confirmed the self-healing properties of the proposed sensor after cells were injured mechanically.