Biohybrid robots at the gym? It might make them stronger, Chinese study finds
Researchers built a bot with living tissue. Electrical and mechanical ‘training’ during growth nearly doubled muscle contraction strength
According to a new study from China, biohybrid robots – built with lab-grown skeletal muscle tissue – could require exercise regimens akin to human workouts to achieve lifelike agility.
“Inspired by the training mode of human skeletal muscle, an electromechanical co-stimulation system for enhancing the performance of artificial skeletal muscle tissues is proposed,” the team wrote in a paper published in a January issue of the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Functional Materials.
As human muscle is trained using both electrical and mechanical stimulation, the researchers developed a system to simultaneously apply both to the artificial skeletal muscle as it grows.
“Moreover, the mechanical resistance can be dynamically adjusted during [artificial skeletal muscle tissue] growth based on real-time measurements of the contractile force of the ASMT,” the team wrote.