Phototactic guidance of a tissue-engineered soft-robotic ray
By Sung-Jin Park, Mattia Gazzola, Kyung Soo Park, Shi-Rvons Park, Valentina Di Santo, Erin L. Blevins, Johan U. Lind, Patrick H. Campbell, S. Dauth, A. Capulli and 11 more. Science, 2016
646 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Swim into the light A bio-inspired swimming robot that mimics a ray fish can be guided by light. Park et al. built a 1/10th-scale version of a ray fish with a microfabricated gold skeleton and a rubber body powered by rat heart muscle cells. The cardiomyocytes were genetically engineered to respond to light cues, so that the undulatory movements propelling the robot through water would follow a light source. Science, this issue p. 158 A biohybrid swimming robot powered by cardiomyocytes is optogenetically engineered to respond to light cues. Inspired by the relatively simple morphological blueprint provided by batoid fish such as stingrays and skates, we created a biohybrid system that enables an artificial animal—a tissue-engineered ray—to swim and phototactically follow a light cue. By patterning dissociated rat cardiomyocytes on an elastomeric body enclosing a microfabricated gold skeleton, we replicated fish morphology at 110 scale and captured basic fin deflection patterns of batoid fish. Optogenetics allows for phototactic guidance, steering, and turning maneuvers. Optical stimulation induced sequential muscle activation via serpentine-patterned muscle circuits, leading to coordinated undulatory swimming. The speed and direction of the ray was controlled by modulating light frequency and by independently eliciting right and left fins, allowing the biohybrid machine to maneuver through an obstacle course.
Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Condensed Matter Physics, Mechanical Engineering
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3991ae8dd521cbfd22ceb8c8ae6eea78cb2d5afe
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In Condensed Matter Physics
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Citations in the corpus
- Bio-inspired soft robotics: Material selection, actuation, and design (2018, background): “Phototactically stimulated contraction of serpentine rat cardiomyocytes patterns lead to coordinated swimming of the robot that emulates sting ray locomotion [97].”
- Advances in engineering hydrogels (2017, background): “These bioactuators relying on cell traction forces may be remotely controlled by a variety of external stimuli such as electrical signals (95–97) and light (14, 94).”
- Bioinspired underwater locomotion of light-driven liquid crystal gels (2020, neutral): “Toward this end, the state-of-the-art aquatic soft robots have employed a range of remote stimulation strategies like electrical (7, 8) and magnetic (9) fields, light (10), and chemical signals (11).”