REVISTA DYNA NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Biohybrid robotics faced a core issue: soft muscle tissue clashing with rigid robot skeletons. Past designs glued muscle straight to frames, leading to tears, weak force transfer, and massive tissue waste just for anchoring. Ritu Raman's MIT team fixed this with a smart middle layer—tough, flexible hydrogel tendons tuned to stiffness between muscle and skeleton.?

They modeled it like three springs in series—muscle, tendon, skeleton—to nail the perfect hydrogel stiffness for max force without tissue damage. Tendons were shaped like rubber bands, fixed to both ends of a muscle strip, then looped onto a robotic gripper's fingers. Stimulating the muscle made the gripper snap shut three times quicker with 30 times the force of a no-tendon version. It handled over 7,000 contractions without fading and boosted power-to-weight by 11x, cutting muscle mass big time.?

These tendons act as swappable modules—a "universal connector" for muscle actuators and any robot frame, from tiny surgical tools to autonomous explorers in harsh spots. Since muscle builds strength via use and partially heals, these bots promise efficiency at small scales plus long-term toughness and sustainability.?

Funding came from the U.S. Department of Defense Army Research Office, MIT Research Support Committee, and National Science Foundation, signaling big stakes in biohybrid tech.