Origami-inspired soft artificial muscles

I did my PhD with this group (Rob Wood). When I was there, these kind of actuators, and the robots you would put them in, were just getting started. It&#x27;s great to see how far they&#x27;ve come.<p>One of the great benefits of these soft actuators is that you can embed them in soft structures and then get smooth movement in multiple directions. Instead of a rigid robotic arm with a few degrees of freedom, you could build something like a snake or an elephant trunk.<p>Another exciting area of research (my focus) is that since these actuators are fairly cheap, you could make lots and lots of robots with them. Think thousands. If you had a swarm of 1000 small robots, each of which has minimal power and sensors, what would you do with it? How would they coordinate their behavior? How would they communicate? For that matter, how would you even turn them all on? Swarm algorithms are fun to think about on robots, but are also useful for other problems out in the normal world.<p>(Don&#x27;t focus on the &quot;1000x&quot; claim. It&#x27;s true depending on how you measure, but it&#x27;s not the exciting part.)

This is tremendous and probably what all robots that interact with humans will look like in the next 50-100. Affordable flexible membranes able to grasp and grapple with our real world, and also gentle enough (when programmed correctly) to not harm humans and other beings, this is the future right here. Very exciting. Focus on the information and less on the headline, guys.

It looks like this is some kind of pneumatic system, and IMHO if you&#x27;re calculating strength&#x2F;weight you would need to take into account the weight of the air compressor, to have a fair comparison with biological muscle. Not to mention the fact that air compressors need to have an energy source, and are quite noisy.

The 1000x comparison is silly - in a straight up lifting of things, a simple steel wire can probably lift 100000x times it&#x27;s weight. The tech has it&#x27;s uses and they should highlight the flexibility rather than perceived strength...

I recall when I was building animatronics in the 90s there was a pneumatic air bladder &quot;muscle&quot; at the time wrapped in stainless steel weave basket. So instead of using a rigid cylinder with rod, when you inflated the bladder its length contracted. You could make an arm bend and the appearance of a bulging bicep! Somewhat similar principle, but animatronics doesn&#x27;t use high-volume parts, so it never took off. These origami-inspired actuators seem really cool!

Neat!. I am working on artificial muscle as a side project[0], especially the kind you can (cheaply) 3d-print. Earlier work used these sorts of soft actuators similar to regular muscle-- you make a bunch of actuators that move in a particular direction, strap them to a skeleton, and then activate them in various combinations to move the skeleton.<p>3D printing, on the other hand, allows you to build more complex actuators (that don&#x27;t necessarily apply force in a line). Origami-inspired designs (particularly rigid origami[1]) are related, in that you can design a particular folding pattern and have it fold and unfold to exert force in a particular way.<p>I was originally inspired by the work on artificial muscles actuated by a phase change (liquid to gas, with attendant increase in pressure) from Columbia[2]. Some combination of the two techniques might be better than either alone, allowing for fast-twitch soft actuators to fill the roles that servos stepper motors have previously occupied. Plus, they&#x27;re likely to be cheaper in general, customizable to specific tasks, and probably safer in situations where humans might get in the way of the robot&#x27;s motion.<p>----------<p>0. Most of the time I am working on reinforcement learning theory, and so building an actuator with difficult-to-model dynamics seems strange. <i>However</i> there&#x27;s a lot RL could offer here, either learning how to control those dynamics from scratch or refining an existing model.<p>1. Wikipedia and its related&#x2F;external links have a good overview: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rigid_origami" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rigid_origami</a> If you just want a cool example of What Rigid Origami Can Do For You, check out: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Miura_fold" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Miura_fold</a><p>2. See the press release: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;engineering.columbia.edu&#x2F;news&#x2F;hod-lipson-lifelike-robots" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;engineering.columbia.edu&#x2F;news&#x2F;hod-lipson-lifelike-rob...</a> and the associated paper: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41467-017-00685-3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41467-017-00685-3</a>

I cannot stop but recalling the last prodigy of Boston Dynamics.<p>Paraphrasing Elon Musk&#x27;s words: This is nothing. In a few years, ...<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;934888089058549760" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;934888089058549760</a>

They are basically inflating and deflating balloons filled with some flexible structure.<p>So 1000x might not be that impressive, because they are very lightweight.<p>And I guess it requires a big pumping device in addition to the muscle (which weight is not included in the calculation, but certainly should be).

So how much is that compared to a human. A 3kg biceps can lift 30kgs of weight, so artifical muscles are 100x stronger than human&#x27;s?

FYI, the associated paper from PNAS is <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pnas.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;early&#x2F;2017&#x2F;11&#x2F;21&#x2F;1713450114.full.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pnas.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;early&#x2F;2017&#x2F;11&#x2F;21&#x2F;1713450114.full...</a>

I wonder if this would make a better penile prosthesis for erectile dysfunction...

&quot;Artifical muscles can also lift, grip and twist objects.&quot;<p>I want to see it crush as well.

Reminds me of cell flagella.

So when do I get my Doctor Octopus style robo arms? :-)