Fifth
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HOW TO BUILD A LIVING BOT
To understand just how muscles from a rat can power a robot stingray, let's dissect this bad boy layer by layer. The stingray bot is composed of four sequential layers of material. The top layer is a 3D body of a silicone material—"the same thing as the outer coating of a breast implant," says Parker—that's been cast in a titanium mold. This flexible, bendy body holds the other materials together.
Parker's robotic stingray is tiny—a bit more than half an inch long—and weighs only 10 grams. But it glides through liquid with the very same undulating motion used by fish like real stingrays and skates. The robot is powered by the contraction of 200,000 genetically engineered rat heart-muscle cells grown on the underside of the bot. Even stranger, Parker's team developed the robot to follow bright pulses of light, allowing it to smoothly twist and turn through an obstacle courses. The fascinating robot was unveiled today in the journal Science.
To understand just how muscles from a rat can power a robot stingray, let's dissect this bad boy layer by layer. The stingray bot is composed of four sequential layers of material. The top layer is a 3D body of a silicone material—"the same thing as the outer coating of a breast implant," says Parker—that's been cast in a titanium mold. This flexible, bendy body holds the other materials together.
Parker's robotic stingray is tiny—a bit more than half an inch long—and weighs only 10 grams. But it glides through liquid with the very same undulating motion used by fish like real stingrays and skates. The robot is powered by the contraction of 200,000 genetically engineered rat heart-muscle cells grown on the underside of the bot. Even stranger, Parker's team developed the robot to follow bright pulses of light, allowing it to smoothly twist and turn through an obstacle courses. The fascinating robot was unveiled today in the journal Science.
Stumbled upon it on Reddit. Looks like media hasn't picked it up yet but here's a webpage: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a21716/swimming-stingray-robot-rat-cells/