top of page

Synthetic Swimming Bio-bots – University of lllinois Engineers Innovate Again

  • Writer: Kirk Hartley
    Kirk Hartley
  • Jan 19, 2014
  • 1 min read

(Credit: Alex Jerez Roman, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology)

What can you get when you combine heart cells, wire and polymer shaped liked sperm?

A synthetic swimming bio-bot. The cells organize themselves into a useful alignment, and then synchronize their "heart beat" to swing the tail and move forward. And, double-tailed structures move even faster.

The engineering and creativity is from Taher Saif and other Beckman Center researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – see here for a ScienceDaily summary of the work. See here for a YouTube animation. See here for video of the real bio-bots.

Current applications? Zero. Future possibilities? Many – see the U of I press release.

Comentarios


About Kirk

Since becoming a lawyer in 1983, Kirk’s 35+ years of practice have focused on advising a wide range of corporations, associations, and individuals (as both plaintiffs and defendants) on both tort and commercial law issues centered around “mass torts.”

Read More...

Copyright © 2020, GlobalTort All Rights Reserved.
bottom of page