It seems like the rat heart cells gold robot stingray market is about to become crowded. Scientists have managed to construct a small stingray soft robot that can be guided by light. This creation is about as weird as it sounds, with a gold skeleton and rubber body used to mimic a stingray’s shape, with rat muscle cells then overlaid on top of this on a thin layer of polymer.

Once stimulated, the rat cells contract the fins downwards, which relax again for an upward motion. To top this, the rat muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) were also bioengineered to interact with light, allowing the researchers to control the robotic stingray’s movement and speed, and to even steer it through a small obstacle course.  

The robot isn’t very big, only about 10 grams with a length of 16 mm – about a 1/10th the size of a regular stingray. According to the LA Times, senior author of the project and Harvard bioengineer, Kit Parker, watched a stingray at the aquarium gracefully avoiding his daughter’s attempt to pet it. It reminded him of a trabeculated muscle on the surface of the heart, which got him thinking that he could actually make something similar, from which the robot stingray idea was born.

Although there is some speculation that the project’s intent is to create a robot stingray army to avenge the death of the wonderful human being, Steve Irvin, at the hand of a stingray’s barb, we could find no evidence of this. Parker did note that he hopes the research could help in the creation of optical pacemakers, instead of the current electricity-based ones, while also assisting in improving soft robot design.