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An Indian researcher in the US has developed a small and low-cost acidity sensor that can tell in real time when food has spoiled. The <keyword id="16846257" type="General" weightage="90" keywordseo="flexible-ph-sensor" source="Orion">flexible pH sensor</keyword> is just two millimetres in length and 10 millimetres wide, making it possible to incorporate the device into current food packaging methods, such as plastic wrapping. <br /><br /> Industries typically use much bulkier metres - roughly one inch long by five inches tall - to measure pH levels or how acidic or basic the food is, so they are not suitable to be included in every package of food to monitor its freshness in real time. <br /><br /> "The pH sensors we developed work like a small wireless radio-frequency identification device - similar to what you find inside your luggage tag after it has been checked at airports," said Khengdauliu Chawang, a PhD student at the Southern Methodist University in Texas, US, who created the device. <br /><br /> "Every time a food package with our device passes a checkpoint, such as <keyword id="16846077" type="DOMAIN" weightage="20" keywordseo="shipping-logistics" botkeyword="" source="ET" sourcekeytype="COMPANY" meta.keywordsubtype="EQ" meta.aliasname="shipping logistics" meta.entityname="Shreyas Shipping &amp; Logistics Ltd." meta.entityid="8578" meta.seoname="shreyas-shipping-logistics-ltd">shipping logistics</keyword> centres, harbours, gates or supermarkets' entrances, they could get scanned and the data could be sent back to a server tracking their pH levels," Chawang said in a statement by the university. <br /><br /> Such configuration, Chawang said, would allow continuous pH monitoring and accurately detect freshness limits along the entire journey -- from farms to consumers' houses. <br /><br /> According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, roughly 1.3 billion metric tonnes of food produced around the world goes to waste every year. <br /><br />Creating the device was personal for Chawang, who is originally from Nagaland where the population relies heavily on agricultural crops. <br /><br /> "Food waste in Nagaland means undernourished children and extra fieldwork for the elderly to compensate for the loss," Chawang said. "The need to prevent food waste motivated me to think of a device that is not expensive or labour-intensive to develop, is disposable and can detect freshness levels." <br /><br /> Not only does food waste contribute to food insecurity and lost profits to food manufacturers, but food wastage is also bad for the environment, the researcher noted. Food freshness level is directly correlated to pH levels, Chawang explained. <br /><br /> For example, food with a pH level higher than the normal range indicates spoiled food, as fungi and bacteria thrive in high-pH environments. <br /><br /> Sudden pH changes in food storage during production and shipping can indicate possible food spoilage. <br /><br /> The pH level is measured by the concentration of hydrogen ions found in a substance or solution. The latest pH sensor has successfully been tested on food items like fish, fruits, milk and honey, Chawang said. <br /><br /> The sensor is made with a very small amount of biocompatible materials and uses printing technologies on flexible films. <br /><br /> "The entire process is similar to printing newspapers. The processing does not require expensive equipment or semiconductor cleanroom environment. Thus, the costs are low and make the sensor disposable," said J C Chiao, a professor at the university, who helped in the development of the device. <br /><br /> The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer's (IEEE) Big Ideas competition at the 2022 IEEE Sensors Conference honoured Chawang with the Best Women-owned Business Pitch for her invention, the university added.<br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:<br /><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/milk-prices-spiked-in-last-6-months-and-will-continue-to-increase-says-an-emkay-report/articleshow/98802185.cms">Milk prices spiked in last 6 months, and will continue to increase says an Emkay report</a><br /></strong><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/finance/banks/news/indian-bank-deposits-better-protected-than-in-us-sbi-report/articleshow/98802859.cms"><strong>Indian bank deposits better protected than in US: SBI report</strong></a><br />

A tiny sensor developed by Indian researcher can now tell if food is spoiled, real-time

<ul><li>The <keyword id="69007" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="world-economic-forum" source="Orion">World Economic Forum</keyword> has picked ten breakthrough technologies that show promise for the future. <br /></li><li>Flexible batteries, <keyword id="15777223" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="generative-ai" source="Orion">generative AI</keyword>, <keyword id="7931350" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="sustainable-aviation-fuel" source="Orion">sustainable aviation fuel</keyword>, wearable sensors for plants and <keyword id="432748" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="green-computing" source="Orion">green computing</keyword> are some of them. <br /></li><li>Many other biological breakthroughs like designer phages, metaverse for mental health, brain-machine interfaces and more have made it to the list. <br /></li></ul>The world is changing fast with new dangers and permacrisis afoot. However, the good news is that a number of breakthrough new technologies are working to make it a better place. The World Economic Forum has picked ten such for 2023 — right from deep biology that can look into the cells to flexible batteries that can be twisted, bent and stretched. <br /><br />To make it to this coveted list, the technologies must offer promising major benefits to societies and economies, be disruptive, attractive to investors and researchers; and expected to have achieved considerable scale within five years.<br /><br />“New technologies have the power to disrupt industries, grow economies, improve lives and safeguard the planet – if designed, scaled and deployed responsibly,” said Jeremy Jurgens, Managing Director, World Economic Forum and Head of the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. <br /><br />In the past, the WEF has picked many such winners — like the genetic-engineering tool CRISPR-Cas9 which was featured in 2015, went on to win the Nobel Prize five years later. “It is now being used to create insect and drought-resistant crops in harsh growing conditions around the world,” said Jurgens.<br /><br />Messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines, earned their place in the 2017 report, became the technology underpinning the majority of Covid-19 vaccines protecting lives worldwide. AI-led molecular design made it onto the 2018 list. Since then, Deepmind’s AlphaFold predicted the structure of 200 million proteins, and the first AI-discovered drugs have entered clinical trials.<br /><br />Let’s look what technologies made it to this year’s list: <br /><br /><strong>Flexible batteries: Bend, twist &amp; stretch <br /></strong><br />The world is going flex – with rollable computer screens to smart clothing. And the systems that power them should be so too. Flexible batteries, made of lightweight materials that can be easily twisted, bent or stretched, will soon hit the market and make standard rigid batteries a thing of the past. <br /><br />“The rapidly escalating development of wearable devices, flexible electronics and bendable displays demand power sources that match the agility of these systems,” the report says.<br /><br />One study forecasts that the global flexible battery market will grow by $240.47 million from 2022-2027, accelerating at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.79%, says WEF. Several companies like LG Chem, Samsung SDI, Apple, Nokia are are actively developing and commercialising flexible battery technology. <br /><br /><strong>Generative AI: Sparring partner to conventional thinking <br /></strong><br />Imagine an algorithm that can draw the image that a human holds in his mind? That’s one example of the boundless potential of generative AI which can design drugs, aid in architecture and engineering — in addition to what ChatGPT does. <br /><br />NASA engineers are working to use this technology to build lightweight spaceflight instruments. But this technology needs to build something more, trust. <br /><br />“To build public trust in generative AI, applications should meet agreed-upon professional and ethical standards. Care should be taken to mitigate AI bias based on training data, with a focus on including “outlier” data and novel societal conventions,” WEF says. It should also address copyright attribution and more. <br /><br />With correct controls, generative AI can demonstrate the boundaries of knowledge, and act as a sparring partner to challenge conventional thinking.<br /><br /><strong>Sustainable aviation fuel: Moving up, with challenges ahead <br /></strong><br />The road-bound cousins of aeroplanes – cars, bikes and more are going green at a rapid pace. However, the cost of making the aviation sector, which contributes to 2-3% of CO2 emissions annually, is enormous. <br /><br />Enter sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) that’s produced from biomass, and non-biological resources. Now it makes up for 1% of the global jet fuel demand, but must rise to 13-15% by 2040, WEF says. <br /><br />“Such an increase will require the creation of 300-400 new SAF plants; and airlines, manufacturers and fuel companies are working around the clock to enable this level of scale,” the report says, adding that availability and collection of raw materials, along with the need for sustainably produced green hydrogen, remain major challenges. <br /><br /><strong>Designer Phages: Virus that carry ‘genetic scissors’ <br /></strong><br />Viruses, as scary as they are, can be engineered to benefit humans. Key to this engineering are phages – viruses that selectively infect specific types of bacteria. <br /><br />Upon infection, a phage injects its genetic information into the bacterium. With ‘genetic scissors’, these phages can execute a set of instructions – they can change a bacterium’s functions. It can be made into a therapeutic molecule or to become sensitive to a certain drug and more.<br /><br />“Phages are also being designed as feed supplements to enhance the growth of livestock, treat certain plant diseases and eliminate dangerous bacteria in food supply chains,” WEF says. <br /><br />Locus Biosciences and Eligo Biosciences are using this approach to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. <br /><br /><strong>Metaverse for mental health: Augmenting connections <br /></strong><br />The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed the mental health crisis to such an extent that the world is falling short of health providers. The conditions are ripe for metaverse-enabled mental health treatment, WEF says. <br /><br />“Maturing interface technologies could further augment social and emotional connections between distant participants,” the report says. Many players are already working on it with gamification and other ways which can also reduce the stigma attached with mental health. <br /><br />Noninvasive neurotechnologies can provide feedback attuned to a user’s emotional state. For example, Neurable headsets use electrodes to measure emotion and can adjust music accordingly.<br /><br />Eventually, the metaverse will also connect to therapeutic neurotechnologies, such as direct brain stimulation to treat intractable depression,” WEF adds. <br /><br /><strong>Wearable plant sensors: The new frontier <br /></strong><br />Traditionally, crops have been monitored via soil testing and visual inspections, both of which are expensive and time-consuming. Recent tech advancements have been monitoring crop health via low-resolution satellite data, which has gone on to sensor equipped drones and tractors which provide information. <br /><br />The next frontier is monitoring individual plants – with wearables. “These sensors are small, non-invasive devices that can be attached to crop plants for continuous monitoring of temperature, humidity, moisture and nutrient levels,” the report says. <br /><br />Growvera and Phytech have developed micro-sized needle sensors that insert into a plant’s leaves or stems to measure changes in electrical resistance, but challenges remain in terms of expense and the reading of the data might need specialised expertise. It needs data analytics tools that can help farmers ‘read it’ and make informed decisions. <br /><br /><strong>Spatial omics: Unravelling evolutionary secrets <br /></strong><br />Humans are made of millions of cells —- but what happens inside them? Spatial omics might actually help us ‘see’ the biological processes, how they work in detail that was unprecedented before. <br /><br />A spatial omics study of samples from people who died from Covid-19 revealed that SARS-CoV-2 causes widespread disruption of cellular pathways across all tissues. Scientists have also identified a set of neurons that help paralysed mice walk, sooner. <br /><br />But this technology needs to be democratised, WEF believes. It had a total market value of $232.6 million in 2021 and an estimated revenue of $587.2 million in 2030. <br /><br />While academic and translational research centres made up 89% of the market in 2020, the market is dramatically expanding to include pharmaceutical and biotech industries.<br /><br /><strong>Flexible neural electronics: Biocompatible now<br /></strong><br />Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) allow electrical signals the brain produces to be captured by sensor hardware – and are already being used for patients with epilepsy, and create prosthetic limbs connected to the nervous system.<br /><br />But the current implants are made of hard material like chips, which can scar humans and cause substantial discomfort. They cannot bend or adapt to brain movements so, over time, they “drift” in position, decreasing the accuracy. But now researchers developed these circuits on biocompatible materials that are soft and flexible. <br /><br />It can deepen understanding of conditions like dementia and autism; and can also be used to develop cardiac pacemakers and more. But eventually, it holds the potential to true human-AI interfacing – but since the data from the brain is sensitive, privacy and ethical use guidelines must be established. <br /><br /><strong>Sustainable computing: Optimism ahead <br /></strong><br />Every time we search on Google, send email or use any form of AI, we are connecting to data centres — which consume an estimated 1% of the electricity produced globally. And, this will only grow. <br /><br />There is no single “green data” magic bullet, but the coming decade will see strides toward net-zero-energy data centres. The first is to use cooling systems to dissipate the heat. Stockholm is using heat from data centres to heat homes. <br /><br />Then, AI itself can come with a solution for the heat it is generating, but analysing and optimising energy use in real-time. DeepMind has successfully demonstrated the potential of AI-powered energy management, achieving up to a 40% reduction in energy consumption at Google’s data centres.<br /><br />Crusoe Energy instals its modular data centres at sites where methane flaring occurs to enable cloud computing infrastructure to be powered by methane gas that would otherwise have been released directly into the atmosphere.<br /><br />“Given the wave of innovation and investment in this area, there is reason to be optimistic about the years ahead,” WEF says.<br /><br /><strong>AI-facilitated healthcare</strong><strong>: Easing access</strong><br /><br />Ever since the pandemic governments and academic teams alike have been using AI and ML models to improve access to patient care – to cut down the long delays many patients experience. <br /><br />This can aid developing nations in particular. India, for example, has a widely dispersed population of over 1.4 billion and has embraced an AI-based approach to enhance medical outreach. <br /><br />“The Indian government has enabled physicians to engage remote communities through assistive technologies, with requisite privacy safeguards in place,” the report says. <br /><br />However, hurdles to this system remain like patient compliance and national security concerns. “Moreover, any system that curates personal data on the health and welfare of a vast population must function within the bounds of a carefully crafted legal and ethical framework,” WEF says.<br />

Wearables for plants, bacteria eating viruses, and 8 technologies in 2023 that can change the future

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neuronal_activity_DARPA.jpg">Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Brain implants becoming more common in medical interventions. They alleviate the debilitating symptoms of <a href="http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/deep_brain_stimulation/deep_brain_stimulation.htm">Parkinson's Disease</a> and even give paraplegic people to ability <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/21/brain-implant-controls-robotic-arm-with-the-power-of-thought">to move robotic arms</a>. Someday they may even <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-implants-will-give-us-superpowers-2014-4">give us superpowers</a> - allowing us to perfect our memories or learn things instantaneously.</p><p>But implants that can stay in the brain for long periods of time, still face one huge hurdle: the human body doesn't like them.</p><p>There are a few ways brain implants are embedded, all involving invasive surgery. Surgeons drill small holes through the skull and "insert long thin electrodes - like pencil leads - until they reach their destinations deep inside the brain," <a href="http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/41324/title/Neuroprosthetics/">according to a 2012 article in The Scientist</a>. The wires extend outside the head and attach to the external recording device that does the computing work.</p><p>Implants can record activity from a group of neural cells, electrically stimulate cells to start processes like movement, or block electric signals that would cause abnormal movement, as in the treatment of Parkinson's Disease. They're often made of stainless steel or other types of metal - useful for conducting electric signals, but problematic for biological purposes.</p><p>"If you look at implanted electronics in the brain over the past 10 to 20 years, all suffer from a common problem which is the implant's electronic probes ... create scarring in brain tissue," said Charles Lieber, a chemist from Harvard University who is working on a tiny mesh brain implant.</p><p>When the body senses an implant made of material that triggers the body's immune system, glial cells begin to create scar tissue around it to protect the brain from what it considers a foreign body. When a probe becomes too engulfed in glial scarring, it loses functionality.</p><p>"You can think about it as putting an insulator on it that prevents it from interacting with the neurons," Lieber said.</p><p>Brain implants generally target a specific group of neurons. But brain tissue often moves around inside the skull, potentially causing implants to slip from their targeted spots, lose contact with the neurons, and become ineffective. This slippage can also cause more scarring.</p><p>To address this mismatch, implants are getting smaller and looking less like the electronic devices that we're familiar with and more like the structure of the brain itself. Lieber's <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/technology-inject-electronics-into-brain-2015-6">flexible mesh implant</a>, recently published in the journal <a href="http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2015.115.html">Nature Nanotechnology</a>, is made of biocompatible material that limits scarring and was able to work for five weeks after being injected into a lab mouse's brain. Lieber said his lab is now doing extended testing to find out how long the implant can remain without setting off the immune system's alarms.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Lieber Research Group, Harvard University</span></p><p class="caption">The mesh implant unfurls in the brain after injection.</p></div><p></p></div></div>"We're up to three months so far in this ongoing study," he said. "There's been no change in the response and it still has good recording behavior, unlike other devices where they either lose the signal or there is so much scarring over time that you have to move the implant's position."</p><p>Other developments include "<a href="http://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.2196v1.pdf">neural dust</a>," sensors about the thickness of a single human hair that can be peppered onto the brain. These wireless implants, in development by a team at the University of California, Berkeley, "convert electrical signals into ultrasound that could be read outside the brain" by receivers attached to the skull, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304914904579435592981780528">according to the Wall Street Journal</a>.</p><p>Scientists are still looking for the perfect balance between an implant that the body won't reject and strong enough to actually do the computing necessary for complex applications. The faster they come to a breakthrough, the more common brain implants will become, and the more likely <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ray-kurzweil-thinks-well-all-be-cyborgs-by-2030-2015-6">people will use them for enhancement</a>.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/batman-arkham-knight-gameplay-video-2015-5">Here's the best look yet at the next big game starring Batman</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="h0MTJkdTrJr4RUNkugPMay1bP53ZZ1Gw" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

This one big problem is why we can't control computers with our brains yet

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Karaghen Hudson and Michael Rosnach, CC BY-ND</span></p><p class="caption">Tissue-engineered soft robotic ray that's controlled with light.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Think of a traditional robot and you probably imagine something made from metal and plastic.</p><p>Such "nuts-and-bolts" robots are made of hard materials.</p><p>As robots take on more roles beyond the lab, such rigid systems can present safety risks to the people they interact with.</p><p>For example, if an industrial robot swings into a person, there is the risk of bruises or bone damage.</p><p>Researchers are increasingly looking for solutions to make robots softer or more compliant - less like rigid machines, more like animals.</p><p>With traditional actuators - such as motors - this can mean using <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/BIOROB.2006.1639201">air muscles</a>or adding springs in parallel with motors.</p><p>For example, on a <a href="http://biorobots.case.edu/projects/whegs/usar-whegs/">Whegs robot</a>, having a spring between a motor and the wheel leg (Wheg) means that if the robot runs into something (like a person), the spring absorbs some of the energy so the person isn't hurt. The bumper on a Roomba vacuuming robot is another example; it's spring-loaded so the Roomba doesn't damage the things it bumps into.</p><p>But there's a growing area of research that's taking a different approach. By combining robotics with tissue engineering, we're starting to build robots powered by living muscle tissue or cells. These devices can be stimulated electrically or with light to make the cells contract to bend their skeletons, causing the robot to swim or crawl.</p><p>The resulting biobots can move around and are soft like animals. They're safer around people and typically less harmful to the environment they work in than a traditional robot might be. And since, like animals, they need nutrients to power their muscles, not batteries, biohybrid robots tend to be lighter too.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Andrew Stern</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Building a biobot</h2><p>Researchers fabricate biobots by growing living cells, usually from heart or skeletal muscle of rats or chickens, on scaffolds that are nontoxic to the cells. If the substrate is a polymer, the device created is a biohybrid robot - a hybrid between natural and human-made materials.</p><p>If you just place cells on a molded skeleton without any guidance, they wind up in random orientations. That means when researchers apply electricity to make them move, the cells' contraction forces will be applied in all directions, making the device inefficient at best.</p><p>So to better harness the cells' power, researchers turn to micropatterning. We stamp or print microscale lines on the skeleton made of substances that the cells prefer to attach to. These lines guide the cells so that as they grow, they align along the printed pattern.</p><p>With the cells all lined up, researchers can direct how their contraction force is applied to the substrate. So rather than just a mess of firing cells, they can all work in unison to move a leg or fin of the device.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7nhygaGOmo">YouTube</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Biohybrid robots inspired by animals</h2><p>Beyond a wide array of biohybrid robots, researchers have even created some completely organic robots using natural materials, like the collagen in skin, rather than polymers for the body of the device. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-3190/11/3/036012">Some can crawl or swim</a> when stimulated by an electric field. Some take inspiration from <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ac0507800">medical tissue engineering techniques</a> and use <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep00857">long rectangular arms</a> (or cantilevers) to pull themselves forward.</p><p>Others have taken their cues from nature, creating biologically inspired biohybrids. For example, a group led by researchers at California Institute of Technology developed a biohybrid robot <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2269">inspired by jellyfish</a>. This device, which they call a medusoid, has arms arranged in a circle. Each arm is micropatterned with protein lines so that cells grow in patterns similar to the muscles in a living jellyfish. When the cells contract, the arms bend inwards, propelling the biohybrid robot forward in nutrient-rich liquid.</p><p>More recently, researchers have demonstrated how to steer their biohybrid creations. A group at Harvard used genetically modified heart cells to make a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf4292">biologically inspired manta ray-shaped robot</a> swim. The heart cells were altered to contract in response to specific frequencies of light - one side of the ray had cells that would respond to one frequency, the other side's cells responded to another.</p><p>When the researchers shone light on the front of the robot, the cells there contracted and sent electrical signals to the cells further along the manta ray's body. The contraction would propagate down the robot's body, moving the device forward. The researchers could make the robot turn to the right or left by varying the frequency of the light they used. If they shone more light of the frequency the cells on one side would respond to, the contractions on that side of the manta ray would be stronger, allowing the researchers to steer the robot's movement.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Sean Gallup/Getty Images</span></p><p class="caption">AILA, or Artificial Intelligence Lightweight Android, presses switches on a panel it recognizes during a demonstration at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence GmbH (Deutsches Forschungszentrum fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz GmbH) stand at the 2013 CeBIT technology trade fair on March 5, 2013 in Hanover, Germany. CeBIT will be open March 5-9.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Toughening up the biobots</h2><p>While exciting developments have been made in the field of biohybrid robotics, there's still significant work to be done to get the devices out of the lab. Devices currently have limited lifespans and low force outputs, limiting their speed and ability to complete tasks. Robots made from mammalian or avian cells are very picky about their environmental conditions.</p><p>For example, the ambient temperature must be near biological body temperature and the cells require regular feeding with nutrient-rich liquid. One possible remedy is to package the devices so that the muscle is protected from the external environment and constantly bathed in nutrients.</p><p><span>Another option is to use more robust cells as actuators. Here at Case Western Reserve University, we've recently begun to investigate this possibility by turning to the hardy marine sea slug </span><em>Aplysia californica</em><span>. Since </span><em>A. californica</em><span> lives in the intertidal region, it can experience big changes in temperature and environmental salinity over the course of a day. </span></p><p><span>When the tide goes out, the sea slugs can get trapped in tide pools. As the sun beats down, water can evaporate and the temperature will rise. Conversely in the event of rain, the saltiness of the surrounding water can decrease. When the tide eventually comes in, the sea slugs are freed from the tidal pools. Sea slugs have evolved very hardy cells to endure this changeable habitat.</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Karaghen Hudson and Sung-Jin Park, CC BY-ND</span></p><p class="caption">Tissue-engineered biobots on titanium molds.</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p>We've been able to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42417-0_33">use <em>Aplysia</em> tissue to actuate a biohybrid robot</a>, suggesting that we can manufacture tougher biobots using these resilient tissues. The devices are large enough to carry a small payload - approximately 1.5 inches long and one inch wide.</p><p>A further challenge in developing biobots is that currently the devices lack any sort of on-board control system. Instead, engineers control them via external electrical fields or light. In order to develop completely autonomous biohybrid devices, we'll need controllers that interface directly with the muscle and provide sensory inputs to the biohybrid robot itself. One possibility is to use neurons or clusters of neurons called ganglia as organic controllers.</p><p>That's another reason we're excited about using <em>Aplysia</em> in our lab. This sea slug has been a model system for <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Model-Systems-and-the-Neurobiology-of-Associative-Learning-A-Festschrift/Steinmetz-Gluck-Solomon/p/book/9780415650229">neurobiology research for decades</a>. A great deal is already known about the relationships between its neural system and its muscles - opening the possibility that we could use its neurons as organic controllers that could tell the robot which way to move and help it perform tasks, such as finding toxins or following a light.</p><p>While the field is still in its infancy, researchers envision many intriguing applications for biohybrid robots. For example, our tiny devices using slug tissue could be released as swarms into water supplies or the ocean to seek out toxins or leaking pipes. Due to the biocompatibility of the devices, if they break down or are eaten by wildlife these environmental sensors theoretically wouldn't pose the same threat to the environment traditional nuts-and-bolts robots would.</p><p>One day, devices could be fabricated from human cells and used for medical applications. Biobots could provide targeted drug delivery, clean up clots or serve as compliant actuatable stents. By using organic substrates rather than polymers, such stents could be used to strengthen weak blood vessels to prevent aneurysms - and over time the device would be remodeled and integrated into the body.</p><p>Beyond the small-scale biohybrid robots currently being developed, ongoing research in tissue engineering, such as attempts to grow vascular systems, may open the possibility of growing large-scale robots actuated by muscle.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-debunked-myth-weightlifting-2016-7">Scientists just debunked a major myth about weightlifting</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="R5cDV5NDE6PIGznqt0rIgXC_wjThBHF2" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

You Searched For "sensor biocompatible materials" and got 4 results

A tiny sensor developed by Indian researcher can now tell if food is spoiled, real-time

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Wearables for plants, bacteria eating viruses, and 8 technologies in 2023 that can change the future

Katya Naidu

This one big problem is why we can't control computers with our brains yet

Guia Del Prado

Researchers are trying to build a biobot - a robot made from living tissue and cells

Victoria Webster

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