Self-healing, Cheap, Artificial Muscles

Newsweek reports: [edited]

Scientists have created nimble robotic muscles as strong as an elephant and as bendy as an octopus. These soft but powerful new artificial muscles can sense their own movements and self-heal from electrical damage. What’s more, they cost only 10 cents to make.

The University of Colorado Boulder team filled elastic pouches with vegetable oil and hydrogel electrodes. When electricity is applied, the oil around the electrodes spasms. This pulls on the electrodes, making the whole artificial muscle contract and release in milliseconds. These movements can beat the speed of human muscle reactions.

The team calls the flexible muscles “Hydraulically-amplified Self-healing Electrostatic” actuators, or HASEL actuators.

Using a layer of insulating liquid also allows the muscles to heal from electrical damage. This gives them an advantage over other “soft robotic” actuators that have a solid insulating layer.

Just like human muscles, the actuators can sense environmental input. The electrical components create a kind of capacitor that stores potential energy according to the stretch of the actuator. This can be measured to figure out the strain of the muscle.

While the super-strength muscles can be stronger, faster and more flexible than our own, they are not perfect. At present, the powerful muscles are held back by their thirst for electricity.

Acome explains: "The high voltage required for operation is a challenge for moving forward. However, we are already working on solving that problem and have designed devices in the lab that operate with a fifth of the voltage used in this paper."
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