Forget motors. MIT engineers just built a robot the size of a stick of gum that swims using living muscle cells — and steered it through a watery maze with light alone.
Reported by MIT News on Sept. 29 (Jennifer Chu) and published in Advanced Functional Materials, the aquabot’s skeleton is a gel film. Each half acts as a fin coated with a hair-thin layer of muscle cells engineered to twitch when light hits them. Flash one side and that fin flaps, pulling the bot forward. Alternate left and right to steer and pace.
Top speed: about 4 body lengths per minute — roughly cow-shark pace (Olympic swimmers clock around 65). Still: it is the first very thin 2D muscle-powered robot that can actually locomote. Earlier biohybrids leaned on bulky 3D muscle chunks.
Lead researcher Ritu Raman, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, said the bot punches above its weight: “It takes a lot of force to move through water versus air… The robot’s quite strong, given its size.” Living tissue, she notes, is soft, responsive, and self-healing — useful in fragile environments. First author Maheera Bawa; co-authors Arielle Berman, Laura Schwendeman, Ferdows Afghah, and Seanbiron Johnson. Supported in part by the Office of Naval Research.
Sources: MIT News; Advanced Functional Materials
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