eBiobots mark breakthrough for bioelectronic robots

The breakthrough in centimetre-scale biological machines by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University and collaborating institutions, is described in Science Robotics.

“Integrating microelectronics allows the merger of the biological world and the electronics world, both with many advantages of their own, to now produce these electronic biobots and machines that could be useful for many medical, sensing and environmental applications in the future,” said study co-leader Rashid Bashir, an Illinois professor of bioengineering and dean of the Grainger College of Engineering.

For over a decade Bashir’s group has worked on the development of biobots, which are small biological robots powered by mouse muscle tissue grown on a soft 3D-printed polymer skeleton. They demonstrated walking biobots in 2012 and light-activated biobots in 2016. Light activation gave the researchers some control, but delivering light pulses outside the laboratory was challenging.

The challenge was overcome by Northwestern University professor John A. Rogers, a pioneer in flexible bioelectronics, whose team helped integrate tiny wireless microelectronics and battery-free micro-LEDs. This allowed the researchers to remotely control the eBiobots.