{"id":221661,"date":"2025-09-10T03:45:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T08:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/this-crawling-robot-is-made-with-living-brain-and-muscle-cells"},"modified":"2025-09-10T03:45:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T08:45:13","slug":"this-crawling-robot-is-made-with-living-brain-and-muscle-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/this-crawling-robot-is-made-with-living-brain-and-muscle-cells","title":{"rendered":"This Crawling Robot Is Made With Living Brain and Muscle Cells"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/this-crawling-robot-is-made-with-living-brain-and-muscle-cells.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Watching the robot crawl around is amusing, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/scirobotics.adu5830\">the study\u2019s<\/a> main goal is to see if a biohybrid robot can form a sort of long-lasting biological \u201cmind\u201d that directs movement. Neurons are especially sensitive cells that rapidly stop working or even die outside of a carefully controlled environment. Using blob-like amalgamations of different types of neurons to direct muscles, the sponge-bots retained their crawling ability for over two weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists have built biohybrid bots that use electricity or light to control muscle cells. Some mimic <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/31527266\/\">swimming<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/38036423\/\">walking<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/scirobotics.aat4440\">grabbing<\/a> motions. Adding neurons could further fine-tune their activity and flexibility and even bestow a sort of memory for repeated tasks.<\/p>\n<p>These biohybrid bots offer a unique way to study motion, movement disorders, and drug development without lab animals. Because their components are often compatible with living bodies, they could be used for diagnostics, drug delivery, and other medical scenarios.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Watching the robot crawl around is amusing, but the study\u2019s main goal is to see if a biohybrid robot can form a sort of long-lasting biological \u201cmind\u201d that directs movement. Neurons are especially sensitive cells that rapidly stop working or even die outside of a carefully controlled environment. Using blob-like amalgamations of different types of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}