Rise of the Machines, Part 4

[Tuckerfan]

I think we're up that high, anyway, meet the robot powered by heart muscles!

In a Los Angeles laboratory, researchers have let loose scores of what amount to living micromachines. Dwarfed by a comma, each tiny device consists of an arch of gold coated along its inner surface with a sheath of cardiac muscle grown from rat cells. With each of the muscle bundles' automatic cycles of contraction and relaxation, the device takes a step.

Viewed under a microscope, "they move very fast," says bioengineer Jianzhong Xi of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). "The first time I saw that, it was kind of scary."

Xi and his UCLA colleagues Jacob J. Schmidt and Carlo D. Montemagno describe their musclebots in the February Nature Materials.

Okay, I keep having this vision of the T800 digging in someone's chest (like the guy in Temple of Doom) and saying in a robotic voice, "I require your power source."

[Doodler]

I think we're up that high, anyway, meet the robot powered by heart muscles!

In a Los Angeles laboratory, researchers have let loose scores of what amount to living micromachines. Dwarfed by a comma, each tiny device consists of an arch of gold coated along its inner surface with a sheath of cardiac muscle grown from rat cells. With each of the muscle bundles' automatic cycles of contraction and relaxation, the device takes a step.

Viewed under a microscope, "they move very fast," says bioengineer Jianzhong Xi of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). "The first time I saw that, it was kind of scary."

Xi and his UCLA colleagues Jacob J. Schmidt and Carlo D. Montemagno describe their musclebots in the February Nature Materials.

Okay, I keep having this vision of the T800 digging in someone's chest (like the guy in Temple of Doom) and saying in a robotic voice, "I require your power source."

Interesting, how do you keep the muscle cells alive?