Robots made of programmable living tissues … sound like fiction
straight out of Battlestar Galactica? New research could pave
the way to machines built from biological materials -- and it
could rebuild a broken human heart. The team developing the
technology, led by Ali Khademhosseini, an associate professor at
Harvard-MIT's Division of Health Sciences and Technology,
published their findings in the journal ACS Nano. Their
invention: bionic tissue, a hybrid material composed of cardiac
cells, gel and carbon nanotubes. Muscles made out of living
tissue hold the potential to give robots far superior strength
and physical properties. Not only would the robot’s bionic
tissue be able to move, it would also be programmable. These new
tissues can already be programmed to swim, move back and forth
and more. Last year, the researchers demonstrated jellyfish-
style robots made of the material that could swim by themselves.
Even more impressive, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
bioengineer Rashid Bashir created