The intriguing opportunities enabled by the use of living components in biological machines have spurred the development of a variety of muscle‐powered biohybrid robots in recent years. Among them, several generations of tissue‐engineered biohybrid walkers have been established as reliable platforms to study untethered locomotion. However, despite these advances, such technology is not mature yet, and major challenges remain. Herein, steps are taken to address two of them: the lack of systematic design approaches, common to biohybrid robotics in general, and in the case of biohybrid walkers specifically, the lack of maneuverability. A dual‐ring biobot is presented which is computationally designed and selected to exhibit robust forward motion and rotational steering. This dual‐ring biobot consists of two independent muscle actuators and a four‐legged scaffold asymmetric in the fore/aft direction. The integration of multiple muscles within its body architecture, combined with differential electrical stimulation, allows the robot to maneuver. The dual‐ring robot design is then fabricated and experimentally tested, confirming computational predictions and turning abilities. Overall, a design approach based on modeling, simulation, and fabrication exemplified in this versatile robot represents a route to efficiently engineer complex biological machines with adaptive functionalities.

Bioengineering approaches that combine living cellular components with three-dimensional scaffolds to generate motion can be used to develop a new generation of miniature robots. Integrating on-board electronics and remote control in these biological machines will enable various applications across engineering, biology, and medicine. Here, we present hybrid bioelectronic robots equipped with battery-free and microinorganic light-emitting diodes for wireless control and real-time communication. Centimeter-scale walking robots were computationally designed and optimized to host on-board optoelectronics with independent stimulation of multiple optogenetic skeletal muscles, achieving remote command of walking, turning, plowing, and transport functions both at individual and collective levels. This work paves the way toward a class of biohybrid machines able to combine biological actuation and sensing with on-board computing.

The intriguing opportunities enabled by the use of living components in biological machines have spurred the development of a variety of muscle-powered bio-hybrid robots in recent years. Among them, several generations of bio-hybrid walkers have been established as reliable platforms to study untethered locomotion. However, despite these advances, such technology is not mature yet, and major challenges remain. This study takes steps to address two of them: the lack of systematic design approaches, common to bio-hybrid robotics in general, and in the case of bio-hybrid walkers specifically, the lack of maneuverability. We then present here a dual-ring biobot, computationally designed and selected to exhibit robust forward motion and rotational steering. This dual-ring biobot consists of two independent muscle actuators and a 4-legged scaffold asymmetric in the fore/aft direction. The integration of multiple muscles within its body architecture, combined with differential electrical stimulation, allows the robot to maneuver. The dual-ring robot design is then fabricated and experimentally tested, confirming computational predictions and turning abilities. Overall, our design approach based on modeling, simulation, and fabrication exemplified in this robot represents a route to efficiently engineer biological machines with adaptive functionalities.

Single crystals of rhombohedral KBiS 2 were synthesized for the first time, and the structure, growth habit, and properties of this layered semiconductor are presented. The single crystals form from a reactive K 2 S 5 salt flux and are still embedded in the residual flux, without removal from the reaction vessel throughout the whole study. Laboratory diffraction contrast tomography (LabDCT) was used to identify the crystalline phase, orientation, and microstructure of the crystals. Meanwhile, powder and single-crystal X-ray diffraction were used to determine detailed crystallographic information. The morphology of the crystalline assemblies observed by absorption contrast tomography reveals screw-dislocation-driven growth to be the dominant mechanism. First-principles electronic structure simulations predict rhombohedral KBiS 2 to be a semiconductor with an indirect band gap, which was confirmed by experiment. This study demonstrates how nondestructive tomographic imaging and 3D crystallography methods can lead to advances in discovering new materials and studying crystal growth mechanisms.

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