Artificial Muscle

An actuator that contracts and extends like a muscle when triggered by electricity, air pressure, or heat.

Artificial muscle is a general term for actuators (devices that turn energy into motion) that contract, extend, or bend in response to a stimulus such as electricity, air pressure, heat, or a chemical reaction. Common categories include pneumatic artificial muscles (a rubber tube wrapped in a braided mesh that gets shorter and fatter when inflated), shape-memory alloys, dielectric elastomers, HASEL electrohydraulic actuators, and twisted-fiber actuators. Compared with a “motor plus reducer,” artificial muscle is lighter and naturally compliant, making it well suited to soft robots, exoskeletons, and biomimetic hands; its drawbacks are that efficiency, response speed, lifespan, and precise controllability generally lag behind motors, so it remains mostly in research and niche products today.

ExampleClone Robotics' Protoclone humanoid is reported to use hydraulically driven artificial muscles to move its skeletal structure.

Also called

Synthetic Muscle

Related

Pneumatic Artificial Muscle (McKibben Muscle) · Hydraulically Amplified Self-Healing Electrostatic Actuator (HASEL) · Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) · Dielectric Elastomer Actuator (DEA) · Soft Robot · Clone Robotics Protoclone

Sources

Artificial muscle - Wikipedia