Artificial Muscles

An artificial muscle developed by Lenore Rasmussen (pictured) will be tested aboard the ISS (Photo: Elle Starkman/PPPL Office of Communications)

Robotics

Artificial muscle set for a stretch in space

An artificial muscle material developed by Lenore Rasmussen and her company RasLabs is headed to the ISS this week to see if, in addition to better prosthetic devices, the material would be suitable for use in robots on deep space missions.

Team member Filomena Simone with the prototype hand (Photo: Oliver Dietze)

Materials

Shape-memory wire simulates muscle in high-precision artificial hand

Engineers from Germany's Saarland University have taken a unique approach with their prototype artificial hand. It moves its fingers via shape-memory nickel-titanium alloy wires, bundled together to perform intricate tasks by working like natural muscle fibers.

Professor Atkeson and his team are working on soft robots to act as caregivers

Robotics

Building a real-life Baymax

Baymax, the inflatable robot in Big Hero 6, may seem as unlikely as a chocolate teapot, but professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon, Chris Atkeson, is working on a real life version (minus the karate and flying armor). Gizmag caught up with Atkeson to discuss the project.

Otonaroid interacts with the public face-to-face (Photo: Miraikan)

Robotics

Lifelike robots start work at Tokyo museum

Two new lifelike (some might even say positively creepy) robot creations of Osaka University professor Hiroshi Ishiguro have now joined the staff of Tokyo's Miraikan National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, and will act as announcer and science guide to a new permanent exhibition.

Illustrations of a human heart doing the left ventricular twist (left), and the Harvard model imitating it (Image: Harvard’s Wyss Institute and SEAS)

Medical

Fake muscles put new twist on artificial hearts

Using pneumatic artificial muscles, scientists have replicated the 3D twisting motion of the beating heart. The research could lead to better-functioning cardiac implants, among other things.

The artificial muscles can lift 100 times as much weight as human muscles of the same size (Photo: University of British Columbia)

Science

Powerful artificial muscles made from ... fishing line?

Scientist have used ordinary fishing line and sewing thread to create artificial muscles. With possible applications including robotics and prostheses, they're 100 times more powerful than human muscles of the same size.

Scientists have demonstrated a new type of robotic muscle with 1,000 times more power than human muscle

Science

Scientists demonstrate a robotic muscle 1,000 times more powerful than a human's

A team of scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has demonstrated a robotic muscle with 1,000 times more power than that of a human's, and which has the ability to catapult items 50 times its own weight.

Robots with artificial muscles would have superhuman strength (Image: Shutterstock)

Robotics

Artificial muscles could allow robots to lift 80 times their own weight

A team at the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) has developed a “robotic” muscle that has the potential to lift 80 times its own weight and holds out the promise of smaller, stronger robots capable of more refined movements.

Crumpled graphene layered on a flexible polymer (Photo: Duke University)

Science

Crumpled graphene and rubber combined to form artificial muscle

A team at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering have combined atom-thick layers of graphene with a stretchy polymer film to create artificial muscles.