The line between humans and machines is blurring. Scientists at the Tokyo University of Industrial Sciences created a biohybrid robot - a robotic device containing living tissue - that lasted more than a week. The research was published in the journal Science Robotics. The first step in creating a biohybrid robot is to create a robot skeleton. Scientists have created their own version using 3D printed resin. Joints and anchors were added to the skeleton, to which living tissue could be attached. The electrodes were supposed to stimulate living muscles, causing them to contract.
The next step was to create a living muscle. To do this, the team took myoblasts, a type of stem cell that eventually mature into various kinds of muscle cells. These cells were incorporated into hydrogel plates. The scientists then punched holes in the plates to attach them to the skeletal anchors, and added several striped structures to stimulate the growth of muscle fibers between the anchors.
“Once we built the muscles, we successfully used them as antagonistic pairs in robots, one contracting and the other unclenching, like in the body,” said author Shoji Takeuchi. "The fact that they exerted opposing forces on each other prevented them from contracting and deteriorating, as in previous studies."
The signature and only movement of the robot is bending the "fingertip" up and down. This is enough to lift the tiny ring and place it on the peg. Working together, the two robots were able to lift a small square die.
Admittedly, developing a “biohybrid” finger does not seem to be the most efficient way to accomplish this. But robots like these could serve other, more practical uses in the future, the researchers said.
First, we could build more sophisticated robots and then study them to gain new insights into how the human body works and how we might cope with medical problems. “If we can combine these muscles into a single device, we can replicate the complex muscular interactions that allow the arms, hands and other parts of the body to function,” says lead author Yuya Morimoto.
Secondly, we could start using these robots in the pharmaceutical industry. Scientists could test drugs on them or conduct other experiments with the muscles of biohybrid robots, without resorting to analogs in the animal kingdom. In fact, it is something like organ-on-a-chip technology, which is also in active development.
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While the capabilities of a biohybrid robot now seem limited, the future of medicine may well be in its (biohybrid) hands.
Ilya Khel