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3D Printed Synthetic Tissue Akin To Natural Muscle

We are closer to facing a terminator in reality than you think.

We all know the inherent strengths of robots: They do not tire, they do not question, are exceptionally strong, and they do not hesitate to crush our babies with their powerful, uncaring metal claws. But we’re also well aware of their weaknesses: They cannot feel, cannot emote, and perhaps most tragic of all, they cannot love. That’s how we’re going to beat them, when the inevitable robot apocalypse descends upon us — with our humanity (that, or maybe am just watching too many terminator movies).

Might sound like the ramblings of a paranoid, but with Columbia University scientists debuting their 3D printed artificial muscle that can lift 1,000 times its own weight laying the groundwork for Terminator-like humanoid robots, paranoia is the sanest response.

Yep, the team has now used a 3D printing technique to create the rubber-like synthetic muscle that expands and contracts like its biological counterpart. Further, when heated by a small electric current, the material is capable of expanding to nine times its normal size.

Professor Hod Lipson, from the Creative Machines laboratory at Columbia University in New

York, said: “We’ve been making great strides toward making robot minds, but robot bodies are still primitive. This is a big piece of the puzzle and, like biology, the new actuator can be shaped and reshaped a thousand ways. We’ve overcome one of the final barriers to making lifelike robots.

The one-of-a-kind active tissue with intrinsic expansion ability that does not require an external compressor or high voltage equipment as previous muscles required. The new material has a strain density (expansion per gram) that is 15 times larger than natural muscle, and can lift 1000 times its own weight.

Electrically driven actuation at low voltage, along with low cost and user friendliness, may potentially revolutionize the way that soft and soft-hard robots are designed and engineered today,” Aslan Miriyev, a postdoctoral researcher in Columbia’s Creative Machines lab, told Digital Trends. “This may lead to development of low cost, nature-like soft and soft-hard robots, capable of assisting in the fields of healthcare, disasters management, elderly care, and almost any imaginable kind of assistance that people may need in their routine life, at home, on their way [to work], or at work, when robots are working side by side with humans.

The muscle-like material consists of a silicone rubber matrix and ethanol, which is distributed throughout the structure in micro-scale pockets.

Although the synthetic muscle has much more in common with natural muscle than hydraulic or pneumatic systems do, it doesn’t exactly function in an organic way. In fact, it is electrically actuated using a thin resistive wire and a low power of 8V. Tests showed it to be capable of expanding up to 900 per cent when electrically heated to 80°C, and this expansion-contraction ability means it can perform a huge range of motion tasks.

3D Printed Synthetic Tissue Akin To Natural Muscle

Because it is 3D printed, the tissue can be constructed to almost any size and is thus suited to a wide variety of applications. Fabrication is easy, and costs – especially on higher volumes – are low.

The next steps for the team include replacing the wires inside the muscle with embedded conductive materials instead, and improving the response time and shelf life of the muscle. The long-term aim is to accelerate the artificial muscle’s response time and link it to an artificially intelligent (AI) control system, said the researchers.

 

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