This is a robotic leg, one currently in development by engineers at ETH Zurich and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. However, it’s not using actuators, cogs or other conventional ...

Imagine a rubber band that turns into a steel cable on command. Now imagine it’s inside a robot. That’s the basic trick of a new artificial muscle built by researchers at the Ulsan National Institute ...

It might look like a simple material experiment at first glance, as a brief ultrasound stimulation induces a thin strip of silicone to start bending and arching. But that’s just the beginning. A team ...

The muscles of the human body are pretty amazing—they can retract on command, stretch without damage, and even heal themselves when injured. Artificial imitators have always lagged far behind in ...

Our muscles are nature’s actuators. The sinewy tissue is what generates the forces that make our bodies move. In recent years, engineers have used real muscle tissue to actuate “biohybrid robots” made ...

Researchers created tough hydrogel artificial tendons, attached them to lab-grown muscle to form a muscle-tendon unit, then linked the tendons to a robotic gripper's fingers. (Nanowerk News) Our ...