Researchers have created software and hardware for a 4D printer with applications in the biomedical field. In addition to 3D printing, this machine allows ...
However, when returning the knee to a relaxed state, the material's healing capability will result in recovery of the electric signal. With the first type of material, they have developed smart substrates to transmit forces and signals to cellular systems, so that they can influence biological processes such as cell proliferation or migration. To this end, they have developed an interdisciplinary methodology that combines theoretical and experimental techniques allowing them to build the printing device from scratch, both the physical part of the device (the hardware) and the computer programmes that allow it to be controlled (the software). "This material consists of a soft polymer matrix embedded with magnetic particles with a remanent field. This opens the door to the design of soft robots or smart sensors and substrates that transmit signals to different cellular systems, among other applications. Until now, this team of researchers had made several advances in the design and manufacturing of these structures, but they were very limited in terms of shape-design and programming of intelligent responses.