Creating a robot fish-shaped stripe and gold core opens a new door to research in tissue engineering, according to a report released today by the journal Science.
The team of medical engineers who created the robotic fish stripe is composed of researchers from Harvard University and Stanford in the US, and Stan Sogang University, in Seoul.
look and identical to a real fish, flat body and fins shaped wings extending from the head and throughout your body proportions the prototype is an achievement of tissue engineering.
The prototype has 200,000 rat heart cells, measuring 16 millimeters long and weighs 10 grams.
Beyond the morphology, the robot-ray has an energy efficiency equal to that of the original animal, because it emulates the way to glide through the water.
The core of the robot is made of gold particles, coated with an elastic layer of polyethylene and cells rat heart are photosensitive, ie, responsive to stimulation the light.
Thanks to these muscle cells from rat heart, engineers can cause the motor response of the robot, because when exposed to light cells fins contract.
The problem was how to get the relaxation of the fins.
To overcome this obstacle, the engineers inserted the golden skeleton, so that retains energy that is later released as the cells relax, and let the fins again lift up.
So scientists, using pulses of light, control the flapping robot-stripe on its intensity, frequency and direction, with such efficiency that can guide the contraption through a career simple obstacles.
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