[Tyler]

Carbon Nanotube Superelastic Artificial Muscles
     


Most roboticists have played with air muscles or muscle-wire and know
they're less than ideal actuators for robots. Wouldn't it be nice to
have something better? Say, a material with a Poisson's
ratio of 15, a contraction rate of 30,000% per second, an elongation
rate of 220% per second, the density of a gas, and a specific strength
greater than steel. If that's not enough for you, how about if this new
muscle material could expand 4,000 times faster than human muscles and
could be switched on and off up to 1,000 times per second, and functioned in
temperatures ranging from -196C to +1538C? Sounds impossible but these
are the characteristics of a Carbon Nanotube aerogel developed by Ray
Baughman and researchers at the University of Dallas NanoTech Institute. Videos and
animations of the new material after the break. For more see the UTD press
release, Nature
article. See also the Science
summary of the researcher's paper, Giant-Stroke, Superelastic Carbon
Nanotube Aerogel Muscles.
   

http://robots.net/article/2786.html