Soft Ring-Shaped Cellu-Robots with Simultaneous Locomotion in Batches

Untethered mini-robots can move single cells or aggregates to build complex constructs in confined spaces and may enable various biomedical applications such as regenerative repair in medicine and biosensing in bioengineering. However, a significant challenge is the ability to control multiple microrobots simultaneously in the same space to operate toward a common goal in a distributed operation. A locomotion strategy that can simultaneously guide the formation and operation of multiple robots in response to a common acoustic stimulus is developed. The scaffold-free cellu-robots comprise only highly packed cells and eliminate the influence of supportive materials, making them less cumbersome during locomotion. The ring shape of the cellu-robot contributes to anisotropic cellular interactions which induce radial cellular orientation. Under a single stimulus, several cellu-robots form predetermined complex structures such as bracelet-like ring-chains which transform into a single new living entity through cell-cell interactions, migration or cellular extensions between cellu-robots.