creating a robot fish-shaped stripe and gold core opens a new door to research in tissue engineering, the journal Science published yesterday.
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.
Aspect and identical to a real fish, flat body and fins shaped wings extending from the head and all over his 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 morphology, the robot-stripe has an efficiency equal to the original animal, and that emulates the shape of glide through the water.
The core of the robot is made of gold particles, coated with an elastic layer of polyethylene and rat heart cells which are photosensitive, ie responsive to light stimulation.
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, engineers skeleton gold inserted so that retains energy is subsequently released as cells relax, and allows the flaps to lift again.
Thus, 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 simple obstacle race.
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