Japanese create a cyborg robot

Scientists from the Tokyo Institute of Industrial Sciences have created a biohybrid robot that contains living tissue. The device functioned just over a week.

At the initial stage, the specialists had to construct the skeleton of the future machine. For this purpose, a resin intended for three-dimensional printing was used. The structure of the skeleton were provided with joints and hooks for attaching organic tissue. Stimulation of the future muscles was carried out by electrodes.

At the second stage, the muscles themselves were created. Special myoblast stem cells, which serve as the basis for future muscle cells, were installed in sheets with hydrogel. The sheets, in turn, were attached with hooks to the skeleton, and then they were inserted into strips capable of stimulating cell growth.

After building the muscles, scientists rather easily managed to create their pairs, that is, to provide a reduction in some with parallel stretching of others.As a result, artificially created muscles turned out to be as close to natural ones as possible. One of the authors of the development, Shoji Takeuchi, noted that previous studies did not give the necessary results due to drying and disintegration of muscle cells. Experts are counting on the fact that, finally, they managed to solve this problem.

Currently, the cyborg robot is only capable of one movement - bending and unbending a finger. In the future it is planned to extend the technology to the rest of the body.

Experts note that, in addition to the advantages of practical use of new machines, there is another task that the newly created biohybrid apparatus is capable of solving - participation in test experiments of new drugs will advance humanity far ahead in the pharmaceutical field and will allow to abandon insufficiently informative and inhumane experiments on animals.