The first biohybrid robotic skin for robots.

The idea of ​​something that already occurs naturally in the body.

And if the robots of the future were not only made of metal, but also of living muscles, researchers from the National University of Singapore made a breakthrough that could completely change the course of robotics. They created laboratory-grown muscle tissues capable of training themselves, without external commands, without direct programming, without human intervention.

During development, immature muscle cells begin to contract spontaneously, instead of trying to control that, the researchers decided to take advantage of that behavior in favor of technology, they connected the muscle tissues using a sliding structure, each muscle contracts, pulls on the other and responds by contracting as well. The result is a continuous cycle of movement, an automatic training that strengthens both tissues at the same time and this solved one of the biggest problems of biohybrid robotics, the lack of strength.

With this method, the muscles reached performance levels much higher than those grown conventionally and that was what made it possible to create something impressive, a biohybrid robot called OstraBot, inspired by fish, uses these living muscles to swim. The researchers managed to get the robot to react to external stimuli - even something as simple as the sound of a clap, the robot perceives and responds as a reflex, as if it were somehow closer to an organism than a machine.

This completely changes the logic of robotics, because here the movement does not come from motors, but from life, it is no longer just about creating artificial life, but about transforming it into something functional in the real world and it is precisely that next step that is beginning to appear in today's most advanced humanoids.