The MIT and University of Pennsylvania team decided that mimicking animal behaviour in robotics was not enough — by mimicking the genetic materials that allow those behaviours, they could make a giant leap towards feasible biorobots. It is the first time skeletal muscle has ever been manipulated to react to light, with past studies focusing only on cardiac muscle cells.

"With bio-inspired designs, biology is a metaphor, and robotics is the tool to make it happen," said MIT engineering professor Harry Asada, who has co-authored a paper on the study, due to appear in the journal Lab on a Chip. “With bio-integrated designs, biology provides the materials, not just the metaphor. This is a new direction we’re pushing in biorobotics.”