The MAESTRO project will develop a new type of manufacturing by combining soft robotics and swarm control to construct assemblies in 2D and 3D from individual artificial cells made of hydrogels. MAESTRO will design rules for building tiny factories so that, like a conductor's baton, global control signals will organize artificial cells into complex configurations. These artificial cells can contain living cells and be assembled into tissue for artificial organs, or contain inorganic particles to assemble into micro-scale tools.
MAESTRO will ferry desired components in artificial cells constructed from polysaccharide-based hydrogels. Current approaches use engineered structures or live bacteria as micro-scale actuators to push or pull desired objects into place. The proposed approach uses the soft robots themselves as building blocks for desired patterns. The artificial cells excel at encapsulating a wide range of micro and nano-sized particles, for example living cells and magnetic nano-particles. Furthermore, artificial cells can be triggered to efficiently release their payloads. Novel swarm control algorithms using obstacle-based particle computation will steer the cells. In traditional robotics, simultaneous control of multiple robots is based on individual motion control that requires heterogeneity among robots or the ability to deliver multiple input signals; both approaches are currently impractical in small-scale systems. However, these challenges can be overcome by parallel motion planning in obstacle-filled workspaces. This obstacle-based positional control makes the position of micro-robots fully controllable using just a single control input. Actuation of these stimuli-responsive artificial cells in micro-fluidic, obstacle-laden environments presents a paradigm shift in fabrication technology.
