Case in point: this biohybrid ray.
The robot uses a movement system similar to a ray, or skate - a type of batoid fish that moves through the water using wave-like movements of fins that extend the length of their bodies. This motion is both efficient and quite graceful to watch, and inspired a team of engineers to replicate it in the biohybrid ray.
The little robot measures in around 16 mm in width, with an elastomer body, and a stiff gold skeleton used to store the elastic energy. The body is layered with roughly 200,000 cardiomyocyte cells from rats, which have been genetically modified to contract when exposed to light.
These cells are arranged in a serpentine pattern down the robot's underside, causing it to move in an undulating wave when hit with a suitable light source, propelling it forward in the same motion as a batoid fish. The small light that is used to control the robot allows each side to work independently so the robot can turn and navigate obstacles.
The fluid the robot swims in contains the nutrients needed to keep the modified rat heart cells alive, which raises the chilling question - Is it alive?
Kevin Kit Parker of the Disease Biophysics Group at Harvard, who led the research team building the robot seems to think so. In an interview with Popular Mechanics he stated, "I think we've got a biological life-form here. A machine, but a biological life form. I wouldn't call it an organism, because it can't reproduce, but it certainly is alive."
(Video courtesy of Harvard SEAS DBG.)
The little ray-bot may not have much direct usefulness in itself, as it cannot swim outside of its lab - it has no immune system to keep its cells from dying off due to infection - but the project has opened up some big doors in the development of bioengineering. The Harvard team at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Disease Biophysics Group hopes to take what they’ve learned and create a functioning artificial heart in the near future.
The experience in melding robotics theory and bioengineering could also see larger scale biomechanical robots in the very near future.
What could a little robotic fish made of a few cells, silicone and a bit of gold accomplish?
With a small enough computer driving its motion, it could become more autonomous. From there, it’s a small stretch of the imagination to see this kind of research leading to synthetic cognition, which could mean a lot for humanity - and these early models of robot fish could be the ancestors for something straight out of science fiction.
The team from Harvard, Stanford and Sogang Universities, among others, published the research under the title “Phototactic guidance of a tissue-engineered soft-robotic ray” in the journal Science.