Perspective—A Robotic Actuation System Made of Artificial Cells and Gels

This paper introduces recent research on liposome deformation techniques and 3D hydrogel printing. The photo-responsive molecules and the molecular insertion into lipid bilayers induces liposome deformation. The 3D hydrogel printing enables us to freely fabricate the hydrogel objects. It is expected that the combination of such techniques achieves the development of living-creature-like robots. We show the future prospects of the development of soft robots comprising multi-liposomes and hydrogels. We are going to be able to construct a heart-like pump and cellular-slime-mold-like swarm because of advances in researches on deformable liposomes and functional hydrogels.

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