What are Fuel Powered Artificial Muscles?

Research on artificial muscles began in the 1940s, but real progress has been made in the last 10 years. This is due to the birth of special polymer materials and intelligent materials in recent years, which provides new opportunities for the development of artificial muscle research. Those new materials often have some extraordinary abilities.

Artificial muscle

Researcher from Arizona State University

Three research centers around the world are involved in the research of artificial muscles, two of which are in the United States and one in

Freelance work is more durable

Current robots or robotic arms are limited in energy and can only move near power sources. So the US Defense

The elasticity of artificial muscles is comparable to that of human muscles. The material's own performance determines that no motor,

Super artificial muscle

American and South Korean researchers have teamed up to develop a superbionic muscle. Not only is this muscle amazingly powerful, it never gets tired. This invention may eventually be used in

Piezoelectric material

Since the mid-1990s, Bar-Cohen has served as an informal coordinator for the constantly changing international EAP researcher community. Back in the nascent period of the field, "the electroactive polymer materials I read from scientific papers are not as magical as the ads boast," he recalled, smiling slyly, "and when I received funding from NASA When I came to research the technology, I had to understand who was working in this area to find some inspiration from it. "Within a few years, Bar-Cohen had enough knowledge and assisted in hosting the first A scientific seminar on this topic began publishing an EAP newsletter, published an EAP website, and authored two treatises on this emerging technology. ^[1]

Space exploration with artificial muscles

In the 1980s, scientists discovered that non-metallic materials can move under the action of electrical currents, so they began to construct

Artificial muscle robot Think of artificial muscles. As a pioneer of artificial muscles, NASA scientist Joseph Bar Cowan has used his own research results to prove that through electrical current stimulation, polymer materials can automatically expand and contract, creating artificial materials with the same functions as human muscles. muscle. To put it simply, artificial muscles are made of adhesive plastic materials. They are tube-shaped conductive plastics that are bundled into muscle-like complexes. A special liquid is injected into the tube. The conductive polymer releases ions in the solution and is stimulated by the current. Complete the telescoping action. By controlling the strength of the current to adjust the number of ions, the elasticity of the artificial muscle can be effectively changed. Conversely, electricity can also be generated by changing the shape of the complex.

Artificial muscles function as human muscles. In artificial muscles, a tubular conductive plastic with a diameter of 0.25 mm can bear 20 grams. With the same volume, artificial muscles are 10 times stronger than human muscles.

Of course, the development of artificial muscles is not the whim of scientists, but to eliminate obstacles in the process of human exploration of nature. In the scientific experiments of detecting Mars and other planets, the traditional engine-driven robots, apart from the joints, do not have any movable associations on their limbs, and their energy is naturally stretched. With artificial muscles, the limbs are more developed and can convert 70% of molecular energy into physical energy, which is far greater than the power of electric engines. A biological robot called Birod has been introduced that can carry more than 17,000 times its own weight. Birod is not afraid of Martian sandstone, but also greatly reduces his weight.

Artificial muscle military research

The US Army hopes to reduce the combat load of soldiers through the "Future Soldier Equipment" program.

Artificial muscle MIT is developing artificial muscles for future soldier equipment. Once the artificial muscles are loaded into gloves, uniforms and military boots, soldiers will have superhuman strength, lifting weights and jumping over high walls is no problem. In addition, using the principle that artificial muscles can generate electricity, soldiers will not need to carry their own generators. Stanford researchers in the United States are developing a "heel" generator, that is, installing artificial muscle materials on the heels of military boots, walking, running, etc. Exercise can generate electricity. Scientists say that with this device, an ordinary person can generate 1 watt of power per step. This energy can be stored and can be used to charge mobile phones and other electrical appliances at any time, which is very suitable for soldiers operating in the wild.

Artificial Muscle Business

If artificial muscles are used only for war, it is really regrettable. Fortunately, in the future, artificial muscles will be used in any manufacturing industry that needs small electric engines to drive them.

Car manufacturers are interested in artificial muscles. A car usually requires 50 to 100 drive transmissions. If these devices use artificial muscles as the driving force, it will not only enhance wear resistance, but also greatly increase power.

Artificial Muscle Science Research

The flexible and flexible properties of artificial muscles can also be used to make medical catheters and snake-shaped snakes that can be used in earthquake relief.

Artificial muscle robot. As a bio-robot attempt, Imagex Corporation in Osaka, Japan has also developed artificial robotic fish using artificial muscles. The robot fish is 6.7 centimeters in length, and the attitude of swimming in the water is no different from that of a real fish. What is even more rare is that its "endurance" can be maintained for six months. The robot fish has no mechanical devices such as motors, shafts, gears, and batteries in its belly. It is driven entirely by a flexible polymer material.

Some scientists even want to bring artificial drive products to the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. Once this vision is realized, people will see unprecedented wonders in the Olympic stadium. Whether it is high jump weightlifting or running swimming, the performance of artificial drive products will make the People are surprised.

Whether in the military or commercial manufacturing arena, artificial muscles will play an inestimable role. Professor Cowan said: "We don't need any gears or bearings, all we need is a conductive polymer material. This will change the blueprint for robotics research."

Artificial Muscle Optics Applications

Artificial muscle is a plastic that can expand and contract under the action of an electric field. In televisions and computer screens, it can produce

Artificial muscle True lifelike colors. Within the next 10 years, tiny "tunable prisms" based on these materials will appear on improved displays and act as pixels. Existing display devices, such as television picture tubes, liquid crystal displays or plasma displays, cannot fully reproduce all colors that humans can see. Each pixel on these screens is composed of 3 light-emitting elements, and each element emits one of three primary colors (red, green, and blue). The monitor mixes three colors of different brightness to produce other colors, but the range of colors obtained by this method is limited.

Manuel Aschwanden and Andreas Stemmer of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich have developed a new method for tinting screens. They used an array of reflective diffraction gratings. Gratings are tiny optical elements whose surfaces are covered with a series of slender, parallel, and equally spaced grooves. These grooves can be used like prisms to break white light into colorful rainbows. Ashwanden said, "Pick up a disc and tilt the bottom side against the sun, and you can see the same effect: the sun reflects on the regularly-scratched surface into colorful rainbow light."

To test the feasibility of this concept, two researchers created a grating array of 10 pixels, each pixel being a diffraction grating. Ashwanden explained that the white light first hit a grating with a side length of about 75 microns. A thin layer of polymer film on the surface of the grating is cast with grooves with a spacing of 1 micron. When different voltages are applied, the grating will expand or contract, so that the grooves encountered by the incoming light will be denser and denser. This effect changes the angle at which the light is reflected back, thereby significantly shifting the position of the colorful rainbow light formed by the reflection. Put a shading plate in front of the grating, leaving only a small hole, this system can separate a specific color, and only let this color shoot out through the small hole. The voltage can be changed so that different colors of light are directed at the small holes, and the system can display different colors.

Artificial muscle To display composite colors on a standard display, each pixel will consist of two or more diffraction gratings. This is necessary, because some colors do not appear in the colorful rainbow light, such as brown.

Ashwanden said that although this system is too small to be practically used, it has the same pixel density as a high-quality LCD display. He also admitted frankly that his invention still has a long way to go before it can be applied to certain video products. The next prototype system they will build will be an array with 400 gratings. The working voltage of their "display" is 300 volts, which is much higher than the voltage used by household electricity, but new materials being developed will reduce this working voltage. OlavSolgaard, an electronic engineer at Stanford University in the United States, one of the founders of SiliconLightMachines, and a pioneer of micro-optical technology, commented: "This is a very interesting result in the field of color imaging. However, to reach the practical level, it also needs to face very severe technical challenges. "He listed several potential technical obstacles, such as how to produce so-called" full black pixels "in order to achieve good contrast; for example, Considering that the grating "discards a considerable part of the light", how to effectively maintain the brightness of the image. This technology may be very useful for passive displays, that is, those that reflect the surrounding white light into an image, and they can be applied to mobile phones.

In any case, Zurich researchers are not limited to monitors, they are exploring other application areas. They have developed a prototype of a high-resolution microscope that uses artificial muscle membranes to change the direction of a monochromatic beam. "Adjusting or redirecting light is the basis of many optical systems," Ashwanden emphasized. "This result provides a cheap and precise way to accomplish these tasks."