Researchers at the University of Colorado in Boulder have combined aspects of pneumatic actuators and dielectric elastomer actuators to create "soft muscles" for robots:
Two soft muscle technologies have jumped to the fore: pneumatic actuators, which pump gases or liquids into soft pouches to create particular movements, and devices called dielectric elastomer actuators, which apply an electric field across an insulating flexible plastic to make it deform with a particular movement. Pneumatic actuators are both powerful and easy to make, but pumps can be bulky and moving gases and fluids around can be slow. Dielectric elastomer actuators are fast and energy efficient. But they often fail catastrophically when a bolt of electricity blasts through the plastic.
Now, researchers led by Christoph Keplinger, a physicist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, have married the best of both technologies, creating soft musclelike actuators that use electricity to drive the movement of liquids inside small pouches. The design is simple. The actuators start with small plastic pouches that contain an insulating liquid, such as regular canola oil from the supermarket. When researchers apply a voltage between electrodes placed on both sides of the pouch, they are drawn together, squeezing the liquid and causing it to flow to nearby regions. The upshot is that the actuator changes shape, and whatever is connected to it moves.
Keplinger and his colleagues report today in a pair of papers in Science and Science Robotics that they created three soft muscle designs that contract with the precision and force of mammalian skeletal muscles. In their Science paper, Keplinger's team showed that a series of doughnut-shaped actuators had the dexterity to enable a robotic gripper to pick up and hold a raspberry [DOI: 10.1126/science.aao6139] [DX]. They also showed that if a bolt of electricity did arc through the insulating liquid between the electrodes, any "damage" was instantly repaired when the arcing stopped, and new liquid flowed into the region. And in Science Robotics, Keplinger's team reports creating two other muscle designs that contract linearly, much like a human bicep, enabling them to lift far more than their own weight at a rapid repetition rate [open, DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.aar3276] [DX].
Also at Boulder Daily Camera.
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[R]esearchers at Carnegie Mellon University have created soft robots that can seamlessly shift from walking to swimming, for example, or crawling to rolling:
"We were inspired by nature to develop a robot that can perform different tasks and adapt to its environment without adding actuators or complexity," said Dinesh K. Patel, a post-doctoral fellow in the Morphing Matter Lab in the School of Computer Science'sHuman-Computer Interaction Institute. "Our bistable actuator is simple, stable and durable, and lays the foundation for future work on dynamic, reconfigurable soft robotics."
The bistable actuator is made of 3D-printed soft rubber containing shape-memory alloy springs that react to electrical currents by contracting, which causes the actuator to bend. The team used this bistable motion to change the actuator or robot's shape. Once the robot changes shape, it is stable until another electrical charge morphs it back to its previous configuration.
[...] The actuators require only a hundred millisecond of electrical charge to change their shape, and they are durable. The team had a person ride a bicycle over one of the actuators a few times and changed their robots' shapes hundreds of times to demonstrate durability.
In the future, the robots could be used in rescue situations or to interact with sea animals or coral. Using heat-activated springs in the actuators could open up applications in environmental monitoring, haptics, and reconfigurable electronics and communication.
Video of the robot in action.
Related:
- Scientists Unveil Bionic Robo-Fish to Remove Microplastics From Seas
- New Stretchable, Self-Healing and Illuminating Electronic Material for Wearables and Soft Robots
- A Soft Robotic Insect That Survives Being Flattened by a Fly Swatter
- Rubbery Figures: Scientists Create an Entirely Soft Robot
- "Soft Muscled" Robots Could Perform Delicate Tasks
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday January 07 2018, @01:43AM (1 child)
If they're anything like me, they'll drop everything small.
Fingers too big.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @01:56AM
"We don't want any pizza!"
"We don't want any pizza!"
"We don't want any pizza!"
So you're saying that your phone rang multiple times, and each time someone else in your house picked it up, they screamed that phrase into the phone and were subsequently pulled into the phone by a tiny hand reaching out of it? I see, so that's what happened. I understand now.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Sunday January 07 2018, @02:24AM (3 children)
I have seen enough hentai to know where this is going.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @02:57AM (1 child)
The Three Laws of Robots (with apologies to Vox Day):
1. Robots never grow up.
2. Robots never get pregnant.
3. If a robot says "no" it never means "no."
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday January 07 2018, @08:55AM
4. [CLASSIFIED]
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Sunday January 07 2018, @02:58AM
I thought so too, and then I saw this:
Hentai plus free random intramuscular electric shocks? Sold!
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday January 07 2018, @12:32PM (1 child)
They mention the precision and force of mammalian skeletal muscles and I get flashes of that chimp ripping off fingers and "de-facing" a person.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @06:24AM
The mention of "soft muscles" and I got visions of...
Well, never mind.
I'm sure the robotics industry will be there as soon as they can so they can have my money.