Design of self-moving gel driven by chemical energy

In this paper, we report the autonomous driving actuator like living organisms. Many researchers have developed the biomimetic actuators and applied many kinds of stimuli-responsive polymers and gels to the soft actuators. Generally, robots are composed of various parts and require the external device such as thermal energy or electricity. On the other hand, many living organisms can generate an autonomous rhythm cycle phenomena without external stimuli, such as the heartbeats, circadian rhythm and so on. In this study, we proposed an autonomous gel actuator similar to the living organism, using self-oscillating polymer gels (BZ gels). The BZ gel is an intelligent material that undergoes autonomous swelling-deswelling oscillations without external stimuli. We aimed at the autonomous locomotion in one direction as a new actuator. Herein, we report fabrication of the self-oscillation gels with the asymmetric shapes and the movement experiment. We have succeeded in observing that the gel could walk autonomously in one direction.