It may seem like the stuff of science fiction: robots made from living tissue. But Victoria Webster-Wood, 33, has built bots from a range of biological materials, with the aim of making robotics more environmentally friendly.
Although robots are now deployed in a range of natural environments—to monitor oceans, for example, or help harvest crops—they’re often made from hazardous metals. Past attempts to use softer, biodegradable materials often fell short: a major challenge is getting soft robotic legs and arms to attach to harder bodies. “At that interface, you’re likely to get tears or defects,” says Webster-Wood, a professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. “The robot can fall apart.”
To combat this, Webster-Wood took inspiration from tendons, the tissues that attach muscle to bone. Using a novel 3D-print head, her team built biologically derived actuators—the components that make a robot move—by embedding stronger fibers such as collagen into soft threads made from materials like seaweed. These tendon-like actuators can then be attached to soft robot limbs and rigid bodies, with less chance of mechanical breakdown.
Webster-Wood’s influence in the emerging field of biohybrid robotics extends well beyond this innovation: her many other feats include building bots with legs made from the muscle of sea slugs and modeling that animal’s nervous system to study how robots derived from living materials might operate without external controls. Her goal is to make robots a bit more like the animals they’re frequently designed to emulate.
