Robotic Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering and Organ Growth

This paper proposes a robotics perspective to the design and analysis of future smart scaffolds to be used in tissue engineering and organ growth. Current biocompatible /biodegradable scaffolds provide load support, template for cell growth, and drug delivery for growth control. It is argued that future scaffolds would benefit from being able to allow/use relative movement among their components, which provides benefits by (1) improving mechanical stress of the cells, proven to stimulate better tissue growth, and (2) offering adaptive characteristics, as a platform that can (a) reconfigure shape (b) modify size to accommodate beneficial organ development, and (c) guide timed growth of complex organ structures, as well as other controlled changes over lifetime; these would become programmable scaffolds or in-vivo reconfigurable scaffolds. In addition, these may be able to sense their milieu/environment (measure and interpret physical and chemical data in-vivo), compute (to determine optimal movements and drug release) and engage in communications (correlating actions with other tissue/organs, interacting with outside the body instrumentation). Thus, future scaffolds can be treated as robots, of a new class, with specific characteristics and challenges such as being made of biodegradable components, and operating within human body; a robotics system perspective is useful in designing, producing and operating such systems.