Design and manufacture of edible microfluidic logic gates

Abstract

Edible robotics is an emerging research field with potential use in environmental, food, and medical scenarios. In this context, the design of edible control circuits could increase the behavioral complexity of edible robots and reduce their dependence on inedible components. Here we describe a method to design and manufacture edible control circuits based on microfluidic logic gates. We focus on the choice of materials and fabrication procedure to produce edible logic gates based on recently available soft microfluidic logic. We validate the proposed design with the production of a functional NOT gate and suggest further research avenues for scaling up the method to more complex circuits.