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Ritu Raman’s artificial tendons strengthen biohybrid robots
Her team at MIT demonstrated that artificial tendons could significantly strengthen and speed up muscle-powered robots.
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Malvika Choudhary - Mon, 01, Dec 2025
- 15:40 EST
- 5
Ritu Raman/ Representative image / MIT/ Pexels
Indian American engineer Ritu Raman and her team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed artificial tendons that significantly enhance the power and precision of biohybrid robots, opening new pathways for muscle-powered machines.
In a study published in Advanced Science, the researchers report creating tendon-like connectors from tough, flexible hydrogel and attaching them to lab-grown muscle to form a “muscle–tendon unit.”
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When linked to a robotic gripper, the unit enabled the robot to pinch its fingers together three times faster and with 30 times more force than designs using muscle alone.
“We are introducing artificial tendons as interchangeable connectors between muscle actuators and robotic skeletons,” Raman, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT told the university’s press.
“Such modularity could make it easier to design a wide range of robotic applications, from microscale surgical tools to adaptive, autonomous exploratory machines,” she added.
Biohybrid robotics—which integrates living muscle tissue with synthetic structures—has long been constrained by the softness of muscle, its difficulty in securely attaching to rigid skeletons, and the limited force generated by central muscle contractions. Raman said conventional designs waste much of the muscle mass in simply anchoring tissue to the robot.
Her team turned to hydrogel, using formulations developed at MIT for toughness, stretchability, and adhesion. After modeling how stiff the tendons needed to be in order to move the gripper effectively, the researchers fabricated thin hydrogel cables and connected them to both the muscle tissue and the mechanical skeleton.
In tests, the artificial tendons improved the robot’s power-to-weight ratio by 11 times and maintained performance over 7,000 contraction cycles. The connectors also prevented muscle tearing, transmitting force more efficiently between soft and rigid materials.
“You just need a small piece of actuator that’s smartly connected to the skeleton,” Raman said.
The work was described as a step toward biohybrid systems that can operate reliably outside controlled laboratory settings. Simone Schürle-Finke, a biomedical engineer at ETH Zürich who was not involved in the study, said the design “greatly improves force transmission, durability, and modularity.”
Raman’s group is now developing additional components, including skin-like protective casings, to move muscle-powered robots toward real-world use.
The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Defense Army Research Office, the MIT Research Support Committee, and the National Science Foundation.
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