These new artificial muscles could revolutionize robotics

At a time when industry and scientists are working on hybrid robots, mixing steel or plastic and synthetic muscles, this last part is still a problem. These artificial muscles can only draw in direction, thus limiting the movements of humanoids. But that was before!

Soon more efficient biohybrid robots?

Researchers from the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have just unveiled a technique that allows you to print in 3D a new type of synthetic muscles. The latter would thus be able to move in several directions, in the same way as human iris. This structure would be able to shoot both concentric, but also radial.

To create it, scientists printed a small “stamp” with microscopic grooves. The latter was then pressed in hydrogel to create a footprint in which cells of real muscles are introduced to grow in fiber.

A new method for creating artificial fabrics

“With the design of the iris, we think we have demonstrated the first robot to the skeleton fueled by muscles, which generates a force in more than one direction. This has been made possible only by this stamp approach”welcomes Ritu Raman, professor of tissue engineering at the MIT mechanical engineering department.

The team behind this discovery also indicates that the method can be used to grow other types of biological tissues, such as heart cells or neurons. “We want to build fabrics that reproduce the architectural complexity of real tissuesexplains Ritu Raman. To do this, you really need this level of precision in manufacturing. ”