(MENAFN- The Peninsula) QNAWashington: Scientists have developed a robotic gripping arm that uses engineered bacteria to "taste" for specific chemicals, an advance that may pave the way for biohybrid machines that can sense and interact with the environment around them.
The gripper, developed by researchers at the University of California, Davis and Carnegie Mellon University in the US, is a proof-of-concept for biologically-based soft robotics. "Our long-term vision is about building a synthetic microbiota for soft robots that can help with repair, energy generation or biosensing of the environment," said assistant professor at UC Davis, Cheemeng Tan.
Soft robotics uses lightweight, flexible and soft materials to create machines that match the versatility of living things, and soft robot designs often draw inspiration from nature. Adding actual living cells to soft robots brings scientists another step closer to creating biological-mechanical hybrid machines.
"The new device uses a biosensing module based on E coli bacteria engineered to respond to the chemical IPTG by producing a fluorescent protein, Tan added.
The bacterial cells reside in wells with a flexible, porous membrane that allows chemicals to enter but keeps the cells inside.
This biohybrid bot can only taste one thing and it is difficult to design systems that can detect changing concentrations, Tan said.
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