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