Living Soft Robots

Overview

Light-guided Biohybrid Robotic Ray

Primary Investigator: Sung-Jin Park, Ph.D

The Disease Biophysics Group at Harvard, led by Kevin Kit Parker, created a tissue-engineered soft-robotic ray that swims using wave-like fin motions, and turns according to externally applied light cues.

Caltech and Harvard Synthetic Jelly Fish Explained

Primary Investigator: Janna Nawroth, Ph.D

Learning from the Jellyfish: Squishy pumps for biomedical and engineering applications
Most people know jellyfish as a painful nuisance, a beautiful aquarium exhibit or–less commonly–in the form of a marinated snack. Now a team of researchers at Caltech and Harvard University have taken yet another perspective on this simple invertebrate; for them, it constitutes nature’s prototype of a flexible, muscle-powered pump that could be used for medicalapplications and soft robotics. Graduate student Janna Nawroth worked with John Dabiri, professor of aeronautics and bioengineering at Caltech, and Kit Parker, Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at Harvard, to elucidate how the jellyfish body creates flows and eddies useful for pumping, propulsion, and feeding. In this video, the teamexplains how and why they developed a technology that turns silicone rubber and lab-grown muscle tissue into jellyfish-like fluid pumps and swimmers–advancing the design of muscular pumps for biomedical applications.
 

Muscular Thin Films: Biohybrid Materials For Soft Robotics

Primary Investigator:Adam Feinberg, Ph.D

Muscular thin films for building actuators and powering devices.

Supplemental video from:
Science. 2007;317:1366-1370