機械的相互作用における心筋振動子の相互引き込み現象の解析

抄録

Recently, bio-machine hybrid systems, that directly embed significant property of living systems to robots, have been attracting a lot of attention. Particularly, we are focusing on biorobots driven by cardiomyocyte-powered actuators. Towards biomaterial-based robotic actuators that exhibit co-operative motion, this study intends to deal with mutual entrainment between Cardiac-oscillators with mechanical interaction. In this study, the Cardiac-oscillator is defined as an oriented collagen sheet bending by cultured cardiomyocytes. We design experimental platform consisting of two Cardiac-oscillators connected mechanically via a PDMS film. This mechanical coupling strength between Cardiac- oscillators is variable by changing thickness of PDMS film. Whether Cardiac-oscillators mutually entrain or not depends on the coupling strength. As a result of experiment, we observed mutual entrainment occurred between cardiac-oscillators.