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Using electronics to build biohybrid robots with physical intelligence

Nature Electronics volume 9, pages 8–10 (2026)Cite this article

Biohybrid robots, which rely on living muscles to drive force generation, could be of use in applications ranging from microsurgery to unmanned exploration. But the development of untethered and autonomous machines will require the integration of onboard electronics for sensing, control and power.

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Fig. 1: Progress in instrumented biohybrid robots.

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Acknowledgements

R.R. acknowledges funding support from the DoD Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program (N00014-24-1-2060), DoD Army Research Office Early Career Program and PECASE (W911NF-22-1-0126), and the NSF CAREER Program (2238715). A.B. is supported by the MIT Postdoctoral Fellowship for Engineering Excellence.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Inkyu Lee, Arielle Berman.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Inkyu Lee, Arielle Berman & Ritu Raman

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  1. Inkyu Lee
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  2. Arielle Berman
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  3. Ritu Raman
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Correspondence to Ritu Raman.

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Lee, I., Berman, A. & Raman, R. Using electronics to build biohybrid robots with physical intelligence. Nat Electron 9, 8–10 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-025-01552-6

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