Powered by muscle cells: paper-thin MIT robot swims through a maze
A gel robot the size of a stick of gum moves using living muscle cells. It is steered by light – MIT researchers see potential for environmental monitoring in water.
Photo: NASA Johnson Space Center / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain (cropped and resized)
Video: YouTube · Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) · youtube.com
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have built a biohybrid swimming robot powered by living skeletal muscle cells. Its body is a film of the gel GelMA about half a millimetre thick, roughly the length and width of a stick of gum; its two halves form the fins. Each fin carries a single layer of genetically engineered, light-responsive muscle cells that is thinner than a hair.
When light hits one fin, it flaps; alternating flashes control direction and speed. In a water-filled petri dish, the robot followed a light source through a maze, reaching about four body lengths per minute. According to MIT, biohybrid robots have so far mostly been built from bulky, three-dimensional chunks of lab-grown muscle; an earlier muscle disk from project leader Ritu Raman's group moved only about 100 microns.
The work was published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials. "Our next goal is to optimize the body design to enable faster swimming," Raman says. The team sees possible applications in environmental monitoring in bodies of water, for example. The research was funded in part by the US Office of Naval Research.