4 ms·

You seem to know stuff about actuation systems; are there any that function like muscles? E.g. strands of wire hooked up across pulleys that repel each other a

• car 9y ago
  Nanomuscle?
• taneq 9y ago
  Not electromagnetic, but Shadow Robot Company (http://www.shadowrobot.com/ http://www.shadowrobot.com/) does stuff with pneumatic "muscles".
• Animats 9y ago
  To function like a muscle, you want an actuator that acts like a spring with controllable zero point and spring constant. That allows you to adjust both position and stiffness. You also get spring-type energy recovery, which matters for legged systems. (Humans recover 60%-70% of running energy elastically. Cheetahs, 90%.) A double-ended pneumatic cylinder will do this. Two motors pulling on opposed springs will do this. A series elastic actuator can fake it by active control. You don't get the energy recovery that way, though. There have been systems with wires and pulleys to get muscle-like actuation, but they're bulky.[1] The series elastic actuator is a position actuator driving a stiff spring, with positional and force sensing at both ends of the spring. If a load starts to compress the spring, the control system frantically runs the actuator to unload the spring before it compresses much. This gives the illusion of a less stiff spring. The spring stiffness simulated can be adjusted in the control system. [1] http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0825/3/2/124/pdf http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0825/3/2/124/pdf