MIT robot swims through water via living muscle cells

What happened

MIT robot swims through water via living muscle cells, according to New Atlas Robotics. An MIT robot powered by a single layer of living muscle cells swam through a watery maze, following a light held in a researcher’s hand. It is slow, tiny and nowhere near ready for the open ocean, but its thin design could point toward softer, cheaper swimming machines.

The robot is about the size of a stick of chewing gum, with muscle cells attached to a flexible gel. The cells are genetically engineered to contract when light hits them.

Alternate the light between them, and the robot turns as well as moves forward without the need for onboard electronics, so all the steering happens from outside the dish. The fins measure 15 mm (0.59 in) long, 7 mm (0.28 in) wide and 0.5 mm (0.02 in) thick.

“It takes a lot of force to move through water versus air,” says study author Ritu Raman, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. In the team’s earlier design, the very soft fibrin gel tended to wrinkle as the muscle cells pulled against it. The researchers switched to a stiffer gelatin-based gel and stamped square-bottomed grooves into its surface.