{"id":223888,"date":"2025-10-24T04:19:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T09:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/a-flexible-lens-controlled-by-light-activated-artificial-muscles-promises-to-let-soft-machines-see"},"modified":"2025-10-24T04:19:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T09:19:15","slug":"a-flexible-lens-controlled-by-light-activated-artificial-muscles-promises-to-let-soft-machines-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/a-flexible-lens-controlled-by-light-activated-artificial-muscles-promises-to-let-soft-machines-see","title":{"rendered":"A flexible lens controlled by light-activated artificial muscles promises to let soft machines see"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-flexible-lens-controlled-by-light-activated-artificial-muscles-promises-to-let-soft-machines-see.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Inspired by the human eye, our biomedical engineering <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.google.com\/site\/thejialab\/home?authuser=2\" target=\"_blank\">lab at Georgia Tech<\/a> has designed an <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/scirobotics.adw8905\" target=\"_blank\">adaptive lens<\/a> made of soft, light-responsive, tissuelike materials. Our study is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/scirobotics.adw8905\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Science Robotics.<\/p>\n<p>Adjustable camera systems usually require a set of bulky, moving, solid lenses and a pupil in front of a camera chip to adjust focus and intensity. In contrast, human eyes perform these same functions using soft, flexible tissues in a highly compact form.<\/p>\n<p>Our lens, called the photo-responsive hydrogel soft lens, or PHySL, replaces rigid components with soft polymers acting as artificial muscles. The polymers are composed of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/article\/explainer-what-is-a-hydrogel\" target=\"_blank\">hydrogel <\/a>\u2014a water-based polymer material. This hydrogel muscle changes the shape of a soft lens to alter the lens\u2019s focal length, a mechanism analogous to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/books\/NBK470669\/figure\/myopia.F7\/\" target=\"_blank\">ciliary muscles<\/a> in the human eye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Inspired by the human eye, our biomedical engineering lab at Georgia Tech has designed an adaptive lens made of soft, light-responsive, tissuelike materials. Our study is published in the journal Science Robotics. Adjustable camera systems usually require a set of bulky, moving, solid lenses and a pupil in front of a camera chip to adjust [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1499,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-cyborgs","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223888","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}