These Robots Use Living Muscle. Here’s How They Move

Tiny robots can jump, swim, walk and grip using engineered living muscle. But the key idea in this ETH Zurich research is how the muscle and its soft scaffold are designed together. This short explainer combines real research footage with original animations of the mechanism—and shows why keeping the tissue alive and scaling it up remain challenges. RESEARCH & CREDITS Balciunaite, A., Michelis, M. Y., Filippi, M., Paniagua, P., Yasa, O. & Katzschmann, R. K. (2026). Co-optimized volumetric muscle design for large dynamic deformations in versatile biohybrid robots. Nature Communications 17, 10732. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-77655-1 ETH Zurich explanation: https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2026/10/one-small-leap-for-a-muscle-one-giant-step-for-robotics.html Research Figure 1 and Supplementary Movies 1, 2 and 5: © the authors, CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Edits: excerpts, resizing, crops and annotations; the opening slow-motion replay is labelled. Original research audio is replaced. Coloured mechanism animations are simplified illustrations, not numerical simulations. The thumbnail is an AI-generated explanatory illustration. English narration is AI-assisted; the quiet tonal soundtrack is original. This is an explanation of published work, not an independent experimental reproduction. #Robotics #Biotechnology #Science