Researchers from MIT and Politecnico di Bari have developed electrically driven artificial muscle fibers that contract and extend like biological muscle without motors, gears, or external pumps. Each fiber contains a sealed fluid circuit and a millimeter-scale electric pump that shifts liquid between two actuators, causing one to contract while the other relaxes. The fibers are silent, scalable by bundling like natural muscle, and thin enough to distribute throughout a robotic structure rather than concentrating bulk at joints. In testing, the fibers demonstrated enough force to bend a robotic arm while remaining gentle enough for human interaction. This could one day be used for prosthetics that move with the body, exoskeletons that amplify human strength, and humanoid robots that move more naturally than current servo-driven systems. Study: “Electrofluidic fiber muscles” published in Science Robotics DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.ady6438
MIT researchers just replicated human muscles. They did it with tiny fibers filled with electrically charged fluid. Inside each fiber is a sealed ...
