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My name is Michelle Oyen, and I'm a lecturer in the Department of Engineering at Cambridge University.
We're very interested in bone because it has excellent mechanical properties for its weight.
Without your bones, you would be a pile of goo lying on the floor.
I'm Daniel.
I'm a PHD student studying at Cambridge University, and I'm investigating ways in which we can create artificial bone.
We could use it for a variety of different applications.
Implants is the obvious one, but also, it could be used as a material on buildings.
So in order to make the bone-like substance, you take a sample,
and then you dip it into one beaker which contains calcium and protein.
You then rinse it in some water, and then you dip it again into another beaker that contains phosphate and protein.
You have to do it over and over and over again.
When I started the project, I started thinking about how we could actually automate the process.
There are a variety of ways you could automate. You could
buy very, very expensive kit off the shelf, but Legos seemed like the simplest way.
The great thing about the robots is that once you tell them what to do,
they can just do it very precisely over and over again, so a day later, you can come back and see a fully made sample.
Research is a funny thing because you might think that we order everything up out of scientific catalogues, but actually,
a lot of the things that we use around the lab are household items,
things we've picked up at the local home goods store, and so, our robots just fit in with that mindset.
It's really exciting to come up with something new.
A lot of science, you're continuously trying things, and some of the time, they don't work,
so it's great when something just leaps ahead.
The importance in science is the creativity in going forward.
It's not exactly what tools you used to get there.