But labs filled with huge vats oozing with nutrients may not be the right way to grow usable muscle grafts.

They “fail to mimic the real mechanical environment for cells” which is necessary to ensure they are robust enough to work with human joints, claim Pierre-Alexis Mouthuy and Andrew Carr.

Instead we need a robot with “structures, dimensions, and mechanics similar to those of the human body”.

The “humanoid-bioreactor system” could look similar to the Kenshiro Robot, made by the University of Tokyo.