Small, Soft, Safe Micromachine as Multi-scale Interface for BME

We have worked on multi-scale interface for bio and medical engineering. This paper focuses on small, soft, and safe (S³) micromachine as multi-scale interfaces. Micromachine is small in nature. We have developed all polymer pneumatic balloon actuator (PBA) as S³ actuator. Novel technologies have been studied in our developmental process of S³ micromachine. S³ micromachine is based on its soft and flexible structure and safe driving principle. Polymers such as polyimide and PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) allow soft and flexible structure. Pneumatic driving method can provide safe operation especially for medical application. The PBA-based medical tool was applied to a retractor for spacing in front of the endoscope at our early stage. This talk also presents the PBA as a surgical tool for a retinal pigment epithelium transplantation. As our recent works on S³ micromachine, a flexible sensor for S³ actuator and a sucking device for medical MEMS are also presented.