An Interview with Dr. Rashid Bashir
(This interview was conducted by Andrew Hiller for Amazing Stories on January 27, 2023 and is the first in the Living in the Land of Science Fiction Series.)
Hiller
From Golems and Clockwork Soldiers to R2-D2 and WALL-E. Automatons have always fascinated us. And today, robots are reality. We see them in toys, construction and even used for everyday activities like vacuuming. But this is Amazing Stories, so we’re going to explore something new. Something that demonstrates how today we live in the land of science fiction.
Biological robots.
Researchers from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, collaborating with Northwestern University and University of Houston have developed a robot that incorporates living muscle, polymers, and microelectronics.
But that’s not even the news. Now they’ve discovered a better way to control it. To talk about where centimeter long biological machines may take us, we are joined by study co-leader Rashid Bashir, an Illinois Professor of Bioengineering and the dean of the Granger College of Engineering. Welcome, Rashid.
Bashir
Thank you very much. I’m glad to be here.
Hiller
When I first came across the term biological robots, I thought, is that a fancy name for human beings. Are we the biological robots? Then, of course, my mind turned to cyborgs. So, can we start at the very beginning? What is a biological robot?
Bashir
So for us, a biological robot is built with living cells, has some non-natural design aspects that we are bringing in from an engineering perspective, and is assembled and fabricated using 3D printing of polymers and hydrogels, which are then connected with the living tissue.
Hiller
And what are some of the things that you’ve been able to achieve with your robots? I understand they can walk?
Bashir
I think walking is, I would say, a big first step. My group has really focused on these crawling robots – what I would call crawling or walking on a surface, robots that can move in particular directions on a surface. Other colleagues of ours, Prof. Taher Saif at Illinois here, their colleagues here and at other places around the country have focused on, for example, swimming robots or other ways of locomotion.
And so we have focused on the walking motion, which is actually pretty complicated when you really fundamentally think about how that could work. And over the years, we have demonstrated the basic concept of these devices. They can be controlled by electric fields, external electric fields. We have also demonstrated them to be controlled by external light. And in this most recent advancement, this paper that we have published in collaboration with Professor John Rogers from Northwestern, and Professor Mattia Gazzola here from University of Illinois, we are really bringing together hydrogels and polymers that are 3D printed to provide what I would call the… the skeleton or the form or the physical structure of the bio robot. And then we are bringing in the muscles, combine the hydrogels with living tissue, which is the muscles from the mice, which provide the force to generate the resulting motion. And then very importantly, and the newest thing in this, in this work, is bringing in also the microelectronics piece, working with Prof. John Rogers, who is an expert on flexible electronics and bio electronics, we also integrate the remote wireless control to be able to stimulate the muscle and provide that motion.
So we have microelectronics hydrogels, polymer materials, and we have living tissue – so three classes of materials that are integrated together to produce the robot.
Hiller
And is the remote control a real game changer? Initially, you almost were doing what the brain does. The brain sends an electrical impulse to muscles. The muscles contract or expand. They fire off. You are using light signals instead of electrical impulses. What difference does the remote control or this type of remote control make?
Bashir
Yeah, that’s a great question. So the muscles, the skeletal muscle cells from mouse cells, they have been altered. They have been transfected with Channelrhodopsin, which is a protein which is sensitive to light. So this is the field of optogenetics. In our previous demonstration, we were stimulating them remotely with a laser pointer, almost basically a beam of light.
Hiller
So. you were pointing at something and saying, Go here.
Bashir
Well, were pointing to it and it would then… essentially activate it or its legs would move and we would shine light and you would have to keep the light on it. So, it was a remote control with light, but it was with like a laser beam that if you think about it, it was actually limiting a little bit because it can only move as long as you keep shining the light on it.
It was basically a laser pointer. So in this case, what we did was with Professor Roger’s innovations, the microelectronics that was integrated into biobot actually has micro LEDs, and the micro LEDs are now locally placed on the bio light and it has the radio frequency circuitry to be able to get an external RF signal, a radio frequency signal.
So now we are controlling it remotely using radio frequency, which then locally stimulates the LEDs to then activate the muscles. So essentially now we don’t need to be shining a light beam on it. The light source is placed locally on the bio bot and we are controlling it remotely.
Hiller
So is this then less binary? It’s less on, off or stop. It allows you to turn the robot and have it do more varied actions?
Bashir
That is correct. So now you can have multiple muscle strips, for example, or muscle regions on the left and right, essentially like a bipedal device, which is what we’ve demonstrated. You can control the LEDs differentially. Now, when you pulse the right side more than the left side, for example, the device can turn. So now you can do all of that with the radio frequency signal remotely, but stimulate locally, then you can have more control of the different regions of the bio bot.
So yes, it allows us much more precise and much more sophisticated and much more higher level of control. By adding these integrated electronics, integrated LEDs and integrated RF circuitry.
Hiller
Very cool. So aspirationally, where do you hope this work eventually leads? Is it going to have an application for prosthetics for drones, medical diagnostic tools? What are the long-range goals?
Bashir
I have to say that in these first years of working on this, we were kind of building out the basic building blocks, which we hope and believe that will eventually could be scaled up to various applications. So if you think about a basic building block as an actuator or that can generate bright electrical energy or chemical energy or optical energy into motion, into actual work.
So that’s what we’ve demonstrated with these biological robots. We think that these could have applications in autonomous sensing, environmental applications… if we can start to move into using human cells, which we have not yet, these were mouse cells, if you use human cells, you can be thinking about implantable devices which can be controlled remotely and the devices be integrated in the body and be thinking about, you know, non-natural functions.
I think the overall hope for the field is that you’re harnessing the power of… of additive manufacturing and additive printing to make different shapes and different devices, adding the power of living cells which, you know, uses chemical energy, for example, and to survive and respond and produce a response, or cells that could sense chemicals and respond, for example.
And then now we’re also adding the power of electronics. So, yes, we believe there could be many applications in environmental domain, in the biomedical and health domain and then potentially in manufacturing domain.
Hiller
Now, since this is Amazing Stories and some of the living tissues that I’ve read that you’re considering adding the use of neurons. I have to ask, you know, the question, do we really want to design smart robots?
Bashir
I think we’re far from making smart robots but we’re certainly, you know, thinking about how to add the neuron as another component of this robot, which would allow us to add higher level functions. So, for example, neurons are also known to sense specific toxins. So you can use the neuronal cells not as something that that thinks yet, but rather is just a sensor.
Bashir
So it could sense neurotoxins and hence respond or move to a site of a particular chemical gradient or away from it or something like that. So we’re thinking about applications like that where the addition of a neuron can add a lot of capability. I think thinking is a little far and you can talk about that, but that certainly is a little further up.
Hiller
And yet being able to identify toxins, whether they’re toxins in the air or toxins potentially in some kind of biological system could be very useful if they’re able to identify them quicker…
Bashir
Quicker and also at a much more sensitive level, right? So at the end of the day, the biological sensing based on cells can also be very, very sensitive. And I think that’s a very important application or use of these bio robots for sensing. I think two points I want to make on that front is, remember, these are biological structures that can also degrade.
And the second point I wanted to make is that I think it’s also very important to consider the applications we’re talking about right now are, are in these domains where, again, the building blocks we need to work on the building blocks to understand and characterize and also develop the design rules. A very important part of all of this work is to think about the design guidelines so that others can use it to design new structures and new sensors and new methods.
The goal in this biological engineering domain has been to sort of develop the design rules of using cells as a basic building block for these machines.
Hiller
And finally, forgive me, but I just have to ask the most obvious question, which is, through your research, did anyone in your lab ever shout out “They’re alive! They’re alive!” and start laughing maniacally.
Bashir
I think it’s happened at least, yes, more than once. The fact is that, you know, we are all used to working with living cells. Cells are frozen when we buy them. They come frozen, and then we can revive them and they are alive and they multiply in our lab. So that happens in labs all over the world. Living material is being used everywhere.
I think what’s very unique here is this idea, like you said, there is… and I think we have to be very, very concerned about the ethical implications of this kind of work, is that these biobots resemble a living entity. Right? They look like something that could be like an insect moving around in a petri dish. But I want to make sure that, you know, we think about that a lot, and we always want to make sure that, we have actually also worked with many faculty colleagues around the country, to think about the ethical guidelines and the ethical implications of this kind of work.
And these things do not reproduce. And that is one of the basic definitions of life. They move. They can convert energy from one form to another – so they do not meet all the definitions of what’s life. And most importantly, they don’t self-replicate and they don’t divide and grow. If anything, they decompose in this case.
Hiller
So the very last question I plan to ask you is one I’m trying to ask every scientist I have the honor to speak with. And thank you for allowing me to speak with you, as I said in the introduction, we live in the land of science fiction, and some scientists have actually been inspired by what they’ve read in novels, comic books, magazines, or seen in TV, in the movies. In your childhood or in your adulthood,
Hiller
Is there a science fiction story series or author? Is there someone who inspired your curiosity in your journey?
Bashir
Well, that’s a great question. There’s actually been many. So I think you talk about, I guess, science fiction or novels or movies or perhaps. But I have to say I’m… as you can imagine, I’m certainly, you know, a scientific nerd in many… in all measures. But, I mean, I. Star Trek was certainly one of my favorite.
So I won’t answer your question in terms of a book yet. I have books I can mention, too, but you just mentioned TV series of movies. So I think Star Trek was certainly one of the things that as an engineer or as a kid growing up interested in science for all of the things that that were mentioned and shown, like the replicator, right?
And then the, uh, all of those really cool ideas that could be talked about as really rapid additive manufacturing and rapid additive printing of, all sorts of materials. So there are many ideas from Star Trek that I that I am a big fan of.
Hiller
And I believe there are several ideas that were… I don’t know if they were first shown in Star Trek, but they were popularized in Star Trek, which later were invented. I mean, think about the flip phone in terms of the communicator. Think about the eye-beam used for electronic sliding door. That was a Star Trek idea. So…
Bashir
That’s right. Or the tricorder and the idea of a device that could measure your health, vitals or measure at the point of care. So, my other area of research is actually developing personalized diagnostics and point of care sensors. And a lot of that idea of a cell phone based or a portable device that can measure disease at the point of care.
Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s starting to be realized now.
Hiller
Which is all amazing and for Amazing Stories. I guess I should end by saying live long and prosper. Thank you, Dr. Bashir.
Bashir
Thank you so much. Thank you for your time.
The following transcript has been generated using Adobe Premier and reviewed/edited for clarity by Andrew Hiller and Rashid Bashir.)
Source: Auto Draft
