Mimicking nature’s most elegant designs has become a popular method for creating equally elegant robots (close, anyway) — but using nature’s raw materials, too? That’s what researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have done, creating a tiny light-controlled stingray with a solid gold skeleton that moves using reconstituted rat muscles. O brave new world!
The researchers, led by Harvard’s Sung-Jin Park and Kevin Kit Parker, started with the skeleton, working at ~1/10th scale of the batoid fishes (comprising skates and rays) on which it is based, and recreating a simplified version of the creatures’ actual anatomy.
They started with the skeleton: Gold is flexible and nonreactive, and they designed the spine and ribs to have a natural convexity. Around the ribs they cultured rat-derived cardiac muscle, genetically modified to respond to light instead of the usual electrical signals from the nervous system. The whole thing is encased in an elastomeric sheath very much in the shape of a small ray.
This artificial stingray has a gold skeleton and light-activated rat muscles
In Jesus Christ Services
Wayne Morin Jr
7/8/16
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