There are many research and development centers around the world that, today, allocate a huge amount of personal and financial resources to projects related to the world of robotics. The fundamental idea, as we are seeing over time, is to achieve more capable robots in practically all fields, that is to say, that in the end they are much more similar, and even superior, to the human being himself.
For this to come to fruition, the truth is that there is still a lot of work to be done, from getting an artificial intelligence fast and agile enough to deal with all kinds of requests, especially in the case of robots that are going to work as attendees, until development of much more advanced motor skills for which, according to many researchers, a new species of synthetic soft muscles manufactured in laboratories that, in turn, allow us to develop much more physically friendly robots.
Columbia Engineering Engineers Wow the Community by Creating a New Generation of Synthetic Soft Muscles
The latter is precisely what a team of engineers and researchers from columbia engineering giving rise to a document where they tell us about the new generation of synthetic soft muscles that they have been able to develop and that today are already being tested in a safe laboratory environment. Among the main characteristics of this new generation of muscles stand out, as argued by those responsible, that they will be able to offer robots greater freedom of movement with what power to resemble their behavior to that of humans and animals.
A very interesting detail that we see reflected in the paper published by those responsible for the project, places special emphasis precisely on the difficulties that soft robotics has had to face for a long time and is none other than manage to develop flexible structures that allow mobility. This team has managed to solve this problem by developing a system capable of replicating the muscle functionality of natural biological organisms in such a way that, like a real muscle, synthetic ones can expand and be compressed in order to carry out movements.
Personally, I have to confess that I have found it very interesting and that, in turn, makes this new type of muscle different, especially if we compare it with natural ones, it is that being made with a high density material this can deform about 15 times more than a natural muscle. Thanks to this quality, despite the fact that it seems the opposite, this new generation of synthetic soft muscles will give humanoid robots sufficient capacity to be able to lift up to 1.000 times your own weight.
This new generation of synthetic soft muscles has been made possible by a new material made by 3D printing
In order to make this new material, researchers have been working for quite some time with different manufacturing methods. After all this, it has been concluded that the best way to proceed was to use the new 3D printing techniques to, from a matrix of silicone rubber with ethanol distributed in microscopic bubbles, to be able to combine the flexible properties and other extreme volume change attributes of other materials in the same material, also achieving that, thanks to this manufacturing technique, the cost is much cheaper.
Finally, in response to the statements made by Hod lipson, Doctor of Engineering within Columbia Engineering and leader of the team in charge of the development of this very special project:
We've made great strides toward creating robotic brains, but robot bodies are still primitive. This is a big piece of the puzzle and the new actuator can be modeled and remodeled in a thousand ways. We have overcome one of the last barriers to making realistic robots.