Walking Microbiobot

Miniature biorobots have been created, driven by
artificial muscle tissues

DailyTechInfo based on Science News: Muscle-powered bio-bots walk on command

Researchers from the University of Illinois demonstrated miniature walking biorobots made by them, which are driven by artificially grown muscle tissues controlled by electrical impulses. "We are trying to combine the principles of robotics with biotechnology," says Rashid Bashir, a leading researcher, "Such a symbiosis will allow us to design and manufacture biological machines and systems that are ideal for use in medicine, ecology and other related fields."

Rashid Bashir's research group is one of the first groups that started designing and creating biorobots whose dimensions do not exceed one centimeter, and their body is made of hydrogel using three-dimensional printing technologies. Earlier, the same group of researchers had already demonstrated biorobots capable of independent movement. The engine of these biorobots were the cells of the tissues of the heart muscles, which, under certain conditions, begin to contract and relax completely independently. This feature of cardiac tissue cells deprives researchers of the ability to control the movements of biorobots, which cannot be stopped or started, accelerated or slowed down.

The new biorobots are driven by cells of ordinary muscle tissues, which are controlled by electrical impulses supplied from an external electronic device. All this gives researchers powerful enough "levers" to regulate the behavior of the robot and allows you to configure biorobots to perform tasks of a certain kind.

The design of the biorobot is inspired by the structure of the muscle-tendon-bone complex. The basis of the biorobot is a "body" printed on a three-dimensional printer made of hydrogel, a material strong enough to form the entire structure, but flexible enough to bend like a joint. The biorobot has the shape of the letter "P", with two vertical "legs", between which a tourniquet of artificially grown muscle tissues is stretched.

Schematic representation of a biorobot

The speed of movement of the robot can be controlled by changing the repetition frequency of the supplied electric current pulses. A higher frequency causes the muscle to contract faster, which is very clearly demonstrated in the video below.

The next steps that scientists are going to take will be efforts to gain a greater level of control over the movement of the biorobot. They are going to introduce networks of neurons into muscle tissues, which will allow implementing rather complex motion control algorithms and using other control methods, for example, using light or special chemicals. Thanks to the use of three-dimensional printing technologies, the researchers plan to quickly develop a new form of the basis of a biorobot that can move equally well in any direction and even perform some primitive actions.

Article by Cvetkovic et al. Three-dimensionally printed biological machines powered by skeletal muscle
published in open access in the electronic version of the journal PNAS – VM.

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