In the field of robotics, researchers are constantly searching for the fastest, most powerful, efficient and inexpensive
Associate Professor Michael Schafer and Professor Heidi Feigenbaum withFaculty of Mechanical Engineering, Northern Arizona University, along with research graduate student Diego Higueras-Ruiz, worked together. They have created a new high-performance artificial muscle technology. It gives robots more human movement due to its flexibility and adaptability, but surpasses human skeletal muscle in several ways.
Engineers called the new linear actuators "artificial cavatappi muscles" because of their resemblance to Italian pasta.
Cavatappi paste (A) and actuators designed (CH) from simple stretched polymer tubes (B). Credit: Northern Arizona University.
Thanks to the spiral design, the drives cangenerate more energy. This makes them an ideal technology for use in bioengineering and robotics. The specific performance and power indicators of the artificial cavatappi muscles were ten and five times higher, respectively, than those of human skeletal muscles. As technology advances, scientists expect higher levels of performance.
Cavatappi artificial muscles are based ontwisted polymer drives. They were quite revolutionary when they first came out due to their power, lightness and low cost. But they were very inefficient and slow to operate because they had to be heated and cooled. Moreover, their effectiveness is only about 2%. In the case of cavatappi, scientists got around this by using pressurized fluid to power the structures.
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