I’m Shoji Takeuchi from The University of Tokyo working at the Institute for Industrial Science This is a very small robot
of only a few centimeters The first motivation to make a biohybrid robot
was from the scientific fictions This is the body of the skeleton
for the biohybrid robot The joint rotates like a finger joint.
Like this So we actually make finger bone like
structures by using the 3d printer and then culture the living muscle tissues
in between the finger bones And when we apply a voltage between
the living tissues they make a contraction So the finger bone moves
by the power of the muscle contractions This is the so-called biohybrid robot We use a 3d printer to make the red colored part We use the 3d printer in the dark
because its resin is cured by light We are now thinking of two applications.
One is making the real biohybrid robot which is a kind of artificial robot
that works by using living materials The other application is pharmaceutical studies When we make 3d muscles it can be used
for drug development Conventionally the drug is developed
by using living animals But when we develop tissues in-vitro,
we can test drugs by using the 3d tissues That might be useful to reduce animal experiments