Credit: University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign

Robots can be very strong, fast and enduring. However, unlike in animals, none of this strength comes from muscle, instead robots mainly rely on electrical motors and other hard and generally inflexible parts. But with all the advantages that conventional robot hardware can deliver, it still does not match the ability of muscle-powered animals to provide an accurate response to different physical environments. To address this downside of robotics, a group of researchers, led by Professor Rashid Bashir, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign developed tiny walking bio-robots powered by engineered muscle tissue.

The robot consists of a 6 mm long flexible 3D-printed backbone with two strains of muscle attached to each of its ends. The backbone has two little feet and is used both for walking and sustaining the structure. The important thing about the robot is that the muscle tissue used in it is the skeletal muscle, the one humans use to move around, which means that it can be easily turned on by administering electric impulses. Furthermore, by adjusting the frequency of the impulses, the robots’ speed can be modified.

The use of skeletal muscle allows for a better control over the robots’ movements. This significantly differs from the previous study conducted by the same group, where the researchers used heart tissue, which contracts non-stop and with a constant rate.

This technology is an important step on the way to integrating biological tissue in machines, which in some cases can be priceless. For example, muscle-powered robots are perfect for medical applications inside the body: the tissue is a perfect biodegradable material and such robots could run in a nutrient rich fluid without any additional power source. In addition, the use of muscle-powered limbs in biomimetic machine design would open hundreds of new possibilities, especially in the field of soft robotics. Imagine how much more lifelike a robotic starfish or octopus could be if powered by muscle tissue!

With the concept of a muscle-powered robot tested, the researchers are now preparing for the next step: the group envisions equipping their robots with light or chemically sensitive neurons for controlling direction of robot’s movement as well as testing new designs of the backbone to enable a wider range of motions.

The results of the study can found in PNAS in the article called “Three-dimensionally printed biological machines powered by skeletal muscle.”

This year’s International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS2013) was held in Tokyo, Japan— a globally recognized hotspot for some of the most fascinating robots on earth. Under the name of New Horizon, this conference aimed to get participants looking forward towards a new era of intelligent systems capable of meeting the needs of the fast-changing times we live in.

The event which was held over six days this November, drew top-notch experts from various areas of robotic expertise. Most of us robot lovers are well acquainted with rough-terrain rovers like AlphaDog, BigDog, and Cheetah. Responsible for developing the machines mentioned above, CTO and founder of Boston Dynamics, Mark Raibert, gave a plenary talk at this year’s IROS. The theme of his discourse centred on the theme of what makes machines capable of leaving the lab and entering the real world? And, how do we enable them with the kind of athleticism and agility normally only found in humans and animals?

But what about the robots we’d like to keep in labs? Masayuki Yamato, of Tokyo Women’s Medical University has been investigating the use of robots in regenerative medicine. In fact, Yamato is currently looking at how robots may be able to help fabricate transplantable layers of cells.

You may be familiar with the use of medical robots but now researchers like Tim C. Lüth from Technische Universität München in Germany are looking at ways to manufacture robots quickly for one-time use with individual patients. The solution is straight out of Sc-Fi: disposable robots made from 3D printers.

A large robot exhibit was also part of this year’s event- held every 2 years the International Robot Exhibition (IREX) marked it’s 20th anniversary. Many of the humanoid robots on display may have seemed to take on an almost eerily-human appearance. To explain the rhyme and reason for our feelings about creepily life-like bots, the event also held a special session:The Uncanny Valley Revisited, A Tribute to Masahiro Mori

While creepy, crawly, or just plain gross, insects are in fact the object of many scientists’ affections.Those involved in the field of biomimicry are attempting to figure out exactly how some of these fascinating critters have honed in on some pretty amazing skills.

Take the honey bee, for example. It’s an animal robotocists just can’t seem to get enough of these days. We featured a previous post on Harvard’s Robobee — a tiny little robot actually inspired by both bees and flies. Whats so great about these bugs? They’re speedy, energy efficient little creatures that can get wherever they need to go with nothing more than paper-thin wings — It doesn’t get much better than that when it comes to sophisticated locomotion!

A recent study carried out by out by researchers from The Vision Centre and The University of Queensland Brain Research Institute in Australia, describes how bees manage to land so gracefully. Because insects’ eyes aren’t wide-set like ours, they can’t gauge distances the same way we do. From a bee’s perspective, if the view of an object is expanding too quickly as it’s approaching, the insect knows it’s got to start hitting the breaks. If the view of the object is still expanding slowly, the bee knows it can speed up because it’s got a ways to. So the name of the game when it comes to bee landing is to keep the expansion of that image constant — that’s the only way they can guarantee a seamless touch-down.

Based on the bee strategy, researchers came up with a mathematical model for guiding landings.This finding could prove to be very useful in the development of robotic air crafts that currently rely on costly and cumbersome radars and sonars. An effort to copy how bees land may only require a simple vision-based system relying mainly on simple video cameras.

If you want to learn more about bio-inspired flying machines, check out the TED talk above by Dr. David Lentink, a participant in the Convergent Science Network’s Living Machines Conference and the Barcelona Cognition, Brain and Technology Summer School (BCBT).

What’s the relationship between living and artificial systems? How can we combine the two to form sophisticated solutions to challenges in science and engineering? The annual conference Living Machines puts these questions under the microscope.

Conference chairs Paul Verschure (Director of the Synthetic, Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems Group at Pompeu Fabra University) and Tony Prescott (Director of the Sheffield Centre for For Robotics, University of Sheffield ) hosted the 2013 events July, 29 – August, 2 at the Natural History Museum in London, a venue no less enchanting than last year’s edition which took place at Antonio Gaudi’s La Pedrera in Barcelona.

In addition to the workshops and the international roster of plenary speakers, this year’s conference featured a special exhibition on Living Machines at the London Science Museum.  Intelligent artifacts and biohybrid art made up the majority of installations displayed. Some of the stranger-than-fiction highlights included: a live musical performance featuring a humanoid robot; a robot model of ‘trace’ fossils from the dawn of life; music composed by a bio-inspired computer programme that mimics natural selection; plant-like robots that grow and change shape; wearable computing for finding your way in darkness and a robot that powers itself by digesting insects.

The fascinating exhibition complemented captivating talks on Natural and Artificial Selves by University of California Berkeley’s Tarrence Deacon; Biomimetics for medical devices by Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena from Imperial College London; the history of living machines by Andrew Pickering from the University of Exeter, and several others.

Stay tuned for the Convergent Science Network’s next edition of Living Machines, coming up in the summer of 2014! To read more about the 2013 event click HERE.

Electro sensors inspired by fish who navigate their way through murky waters, robots that dance with the honeybees, and artificial muscles and blood vessels making their way into modern medicine. These are just a few of the research topics that were discussed at this year’s Living Machines Conference that took place from 9th to the 12th of July in Barcelona, Spain.

Chairs of the session  Paul Verschure, from Pompeu Fabra University and Tony Prescott from the University of Sheffield, welcomed delegates to one of Barcelona’s architectural gems; Antoni Gaudí’s La Pedrera building.

During 4 consecutive days, leading scientists in the fields of Biomimetics and Biohybryd systems gathered for pre-conference workshops, lectures, poster sessions, exhibitions and open panel sessions to present their work and discuss issues related to the development of real-word technologies inspired by biological systems.

The first day finished off with a panel-lead discussion centred on the question: why study nature? Co-chair Tony Prescott got dialogue flowing by providing two general reasons: to build technologies that could be useful in solving current challenges, and to better understand nature itself.  While the speakers and audience engaged in the discussion agreed that these are likely the main motives, other interesting opinions surged through out the conversation.

According to Barry Trimmer who specializes in Neurobiology at the University of Tufts,  by attempting to understand nature’s complexity, a biomimetic approach may allow us to bypass the limits of human creativity.

Toshio Fukuda who specializes in Micro-Nano Systems Engineering at Nagoya University is often inspired by particular functions or geometric shapes found in nature to help make devices such as the artificial blood vessels he works on more efficient.

Conversely, as a mechanical engineer specialized in aerodynamics, David Lentink  is not so much interested in biomimetics as an outfit for a design, but rather in specific principles which might make sense from an engineering point of view ¨ We don’t want to look at the final detail of a bird wing to make an aircraft because it’s simply too complex, but some of the principles are extremely useful and they allow scientists to really think outside the box.¨

While a biomimetic approach often involves studying some of the most puzzling aspects of nature scientists have yet to wrap their heads around, there are still many things nature can’t do. ¨ Biological systems satisfy many constraints at one time so they may not be optimal for any one function that we may want to imitate. Flight is a great example because we can do things by optimizing that birds just can’t do and we can exceed the capabilities of birds with jets and planes that we build,¨explained Frank Grasso, director of the Biomimetic and Cognitive Robotics lab at Brooklyn College, New York.

However, Dieter Braun, who specializes in Systems Biophysics at Ludwig Maximilians University, pointed out that it’s really a two-way learning stream and just because ¨evolution did not invent the bicycle¨ nature still has plenty of tricks to teach us and we need not be afraid of its complexity.

Check back to find out more on what what was shared during the 2012 Living Machines Conference; proceedings from the conference will be published in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNAI/LNCS).