Watch a robot made of muscle and steel turn on a dime

Some of today’s most advanced robots can leap over obstacles, crawl through tight spaces and swim gracefully—as long as they’re traveling in straight lines. Making turns, however, often poses a challenge to so-called biohybrid machines, which combine living tissue with robotic materials. Now, scientists from Japan report today in Matter that they have created a bipedal biohybrid bot that can turn on a dime , albeit slowly. If the technique can be made to work in other biohybrids, it could help these machines maneuver more adeptly for search and rescue operations or exploring inhospitable deep-sea environments. Suspended in water, the legs of the new robot are made of 3D-printed elements, flexible rubber, and skeletal muscle tissue grown by culturing rat cells in a lab . As seen in the video above, the researchers zap the water with electricity, causing the muscle tissue to contract and the robot to take a step forward. By triggering alternating contractions every 5 seconds, the bot could walk at a leisurely pace of 5.4 millimeters per minute. Although its speed was modest, its handling was more impressive. Using one leg as an anchor while the other continues to step, the machine can also rotate and make a 90° turn in just over 1 minute. That may seem sluggish, but it’s a big deal for biohybrid robots, the researchers note. In its current iteration, the machine has several limitations. It needs to be submerged in water, lest i...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news