HOW TO BUILD A BIOBOT

IN A FEW WORDS, WHAT DO YOU STUDY?

I’m a mechanical engineer. Typically, you think of mechanical engineers as people who build machines or devices that use materials like metals or ceramics or plastics. I essentially add another set of materials into the toolbox and think about whether we can start building machines using biological materials like living cells.

So, one example of a biological machine that I built is a robot that uses living skeletal muscle to move and walk around. Machines that incorporate biological materials can do pretty interesting things. When you fall and cut your skin, you heal. When you exercise, you get stronger. And it turns out that these robots can do the same thing. When they exercise, they can get stronger and they can also heal from damage.

WHAT DO YOU USE THESE BIOHYBRID MACHINES FOR?

A lot of what we are trying to achieve is just to discover what the design rules and principles of building with biological materials are. For example, building a