“If muscles are nature’s motors, tendons are the drive shafts—and MIT just built a better one.” That’s how one researcher framed a breakthrough with the potential to redefine biohybrid robotics. In their latest work, MIT engineers have designed hydrogel-based artificial tendons that seamlessly connect lab-grown muscle tissue to rigid robotic structures, solving the long-standing mechanical mismatch problem and delivering staggering performance gains.
Biohybrid robots-machines powered by living muscle actuators-have long been a beguiling prospect. They could bring miniature devices featuring real lifelike motion, which is selfhealing and possesses metabolic efficiency way beyond synthetic actuators. But one key engineering obstacle has remained: muscle tissue is soft and flexible, whereas robotic skeletons are rigid. Attach one directly to the other, and tearing often occurs; poor force transfer ensues with much wasted muscle mass that does little actual work.
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