Small soft safe micromachines for biomedical applications

This paper introduces small, soft, and safe (S³) micromachine and its biomedical applications. MEMS technology has made remarkable development of tiny machines based on LSI technology. Micromachine and MEMS are small in nature. We have developed all polymer pneumatic balloon actuator (PBA) as S³ actuator. PBA employed pneumatic driving principle. S³ micromachine is based on its soft and flexible structure and safe driving principle. Polymers such as polyimide and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) allow soft and flexible structure. S³ micromachines are expected to allow minimally invasive medicine. Especially, pneumatic driving method can provide safe operation 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 retinal pigment epithelium transplantation. As our recent works on S³ micromachine, further possibilities will be presented.