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Biohybrid robots at the gym? It might make them stronger, Chinese study finds

Researchers built a bot with living tissue. Electrical and mechanical ‘training’ during growth nearly doubled muscle contraction strength

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The Chinese study used a robot built with living tissue, unlike this humanoid robot from Clone Robotics that mimics biological systems, which was seen in a video on X last month. Photo: Handout
Victoria Bela
If you see a robot working out in a gym someday, do not be surprised – it might just be training its artificial muscles.

According to a new study from China, biohybrid robots – built with lab-grown skeletal muscle tissue – could require exercise regimens akin to human workouts to achieve lifelike agility.

The researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that electrically and mechanically “training” artificial muscles during their growth phase nearly doubled contraction strength and enabled a biohybrid caterpillar-bot to crawl faster than earlier models.

“Inspired by the training mode of human skeletal muscle, an electromechanical co-stimulation system for enhancing the performance of artificial skeletal muscle tissues is proposed,” the team wrote in a paper published in a January issue of the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Functional Materials.

As human muscle is trained using both electrical and mechanical stimulation, the researchers developed a system to simultaneously apply both to the artificial skeletal muscle as it grows.

“Moreover, the mechanical resistance can be dynamically adjusted during [artificial skeletal muscle tissue] growth based on real-time measurements of the contractile force of the ASMT,” the team wrote.

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