4 ms·
It's coming but robotics has a major obstacle: transferring power to locomotion. Ideally, we'd have something like a synthetic muscle that converts electricity
by jmpe 13y ago
It's coming but robotics has a major obstacle: transferring power to locomotion. Ideally, we'd have something like a synthetic muscle that converts electricity to work. Instead we have all sorts of servo/hydraulics based actuators. Because of this robotics have a problem with elegant design (anything that doesn't run on wheels) and power/autonomy.
There are advances out there, but as long as one can't buy a strand of synthetic muscle for a few dollars it's not going to progress that much.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoTendons on linear motors seems like a good approach. http://www.roboy.org/ http://www.roboy.org/ Also, there are shape memory alloys and they are essentially a strand of synthetic muscle for a few dollars. You could concievable bundle them together to make a larger muscle, but you will probably have to do some active cooling if you want any sort of decent response curve and even then motors can be a lot faster. What I think we could really do with is a linear actuator with a simple built in clutch that doesn't take power to hold a position.
- jmpe 13y agoThanks, wasn't aware of roboy. You're absolutely correct re clutching actuators. There are a lot of robotics projects out there that combine small devices with limited mobility to create a larger (multicellular) robot with higher mobility. All of these projects stumble on that particular aspect: maintaining a lock without consuming power. M-Tran, Symbrion, Distributed Flight Array, ...