Locust-Derived Biohybrid Muscle Actuators for Low-Power Explosive Jumping.

A critical challenge for jumping microrobots is achieving a compact actuator with a high energy output as traditional elastic actuators are inherently bulky. The integration of biological materials with artificial systems to realize biohybrid muscle actuators is a promising approach. However, previous attempts utilizing the entire organism have been hampered by the unpredictability of the native nervous system, and actuators integrating cultivated or extracted muscle tissues have so far been unable to achieve a sufficiently explosive output capacity for jumping. Here, discarded locust hindlegs are repurposed into explosive biohybrid muscle actuators that are synergistically integrated with an artificial robotic system. The resulting biohybrid locust is only 2 g in weight and is precisely controlled through electrical stimulation to achieve dynamic leaps of up to 18 times its body length and 7 times its body height, which outperforms most synthetic counterparts. The design exhibits 2 key functional advances: on the one hand, the actuator requires an ultralow-power input of only 0.03 mW via the optimization of stimulation protocols; on the other hand, the actuator rapidly releases kinetic energy, enabling the artificial robotic system to perform long-distance jumps. This paper presents an experimental validation and biomechanical analysis on the biohybrid locust to demonstrate how our strategy unlocks sustainable and high-performance actuation for microrobots. This work pioneers a roadmap for the next generation of biohybrid robots that merge ecological sustainability with engineering excellence.