They began by walking. Then they saw the light. The remote control is now available for small biological robots. According to researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University, and partnering institutions, the hybrid “eBiobots” are the first to integrate soft materials, live muscle, and microelectronics. In the journal Science Robotics, they reported their centimetre-scale biological devices.
“By integrating microelectronics, we can now produce these electronic biobots and machines that could be useful for many medical, sensing, and environmental applications in the future,” said study co-leader Rashid Bashir, an Illinois professor of bioengineering and dean of the Grainger College of Engineering.
Bashir’s lab was the first to build biobots, which are miniature biological robots driven by mouse muscle tissue grown on a soft 3D-printed polymer framework. In 2012, they displayed walking biobots, and in 2016, they presented light-activated biobots. The light activation provided the researchers with some control, but practical applications were hampered by the issue of how to deliver light pulses to the biobots outside of a lab context.
Northwestern University professor John A. Rogers, a pioneer in flexible bioelectronics whose team assisted with the integration of small wireless microelectronics and battery-free micro-LEDs, provided the solution. This enabled the researchers to manipulate the eBiobots remotely.
“This novel marriage of technology and biology offers up a world of possibilities for self-healing, learning, developing, communicating, and self-organizing engineered systems. We believe it is an excellent candidate for future research, with specific applications in biomedicine and environmental monitoring “Rogers is a Northwestern University professor of materials science and engineering, biomedical engineering, and neurological surgery and the director of the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics.
The researchers set out to remove cumbersome batteries and tethering lines in order to offer the biobots the freedom of movement essential for practical applications. According to co-first author Zhengwei Li, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Houston, the eBiobots gather electricity and produce a controlled output voltage to light the micro-LEDs.
The researchers may give the eBiobots a wireless signal that causes the LEDs to pulse. The LEDs cause the light-sensitive designed muscle to contract, causing the polymer legs to move, causing the robots to “walk.” The micro-LEDs are so precise that they can trigger individual muscle groups, causing the eBiobot to turn in the appropriate direction.
The researchers employed computer modelling to improve the resilience, speed, and mobility of the eBiobot design and component integration. Mattia Gazzola, an Illinois professor of mechanical sciences and engineering, oversaw the modelling and creation of the eBiobots. The scaffolds’ iterative design and additive 3D printing enabled quick cycles of trials and performance improvement, according to Gazzola and co-first author Xiaotian Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher in Gazzola’s group.
According to co-first author Youngdeok Kim, who completed the work as a graduate student at Illinois, the design allows for future integration of additional microelectronics, such as chemical and biological sensors, or 3D-printed scaffold parts for functions like pushing or transporting things that the biobots encounter. The incorporation of electronic sensors or biological neurons would enable the eBiobots to detect and react to environmental contaminants, biomarkers for illness, and other possibilities, according to the researchers.
“By creating the first hybrid bioelectronic robot, we are paving the way for a new paradigm of applications for health care innovation, such as in-situ biopsies and analysis, minimally invasive surgery, or even cancer detection inside the human body,” Li said.
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