Artificial muscles propel a robotic leg to walk and jump
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Researchers at ETH Zurich and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems have developed a robotic leg with artificial muscles
- Researchers have developed the first robotic leg powered by artificial electro-hydraulic muscles that can automatically adapt to uneven terrain.
- The system is more energy efficient than electric motors, enabling high jumps and fast movements without complex sensors.
- Although still in its infancy, the technology offers potential for future applications in soft robotics.
Inventors and researchers have been developing robots for almost 70 years. To date, all the machines they have built – whether for factories or elsewhere – have had one thing in common: they are powered by motors, a technology that is already 200 years old. Even walking robots feature arms and legs that are powered by motors, not by muscles as in humans and animals. This in part suggests why they lack the mobility and adaptability of living creatures.
A new muscle-powered robotic leg is not only more energy efficient than a conventional one, it can also perform high jumps and fast movements as well as detect and react to obstacles – all without the need for complex sensors. The new leg has been developed by researchers at ETH Zurich and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in a research partnership called Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems, known as CLS. The CLS team was led by Robert Katzschmann, Soft Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich and Christoph Keplinger at MPI-IS. Their doctoral students Thomas Buchner and Toshihiko Fukushima are the co-first authors of the team’s publication team has now reported on an their animal-inspired musculoskeletal robotic leg in external pageNature Communications.
Electrically charged like a balloon
As in humans and animals, an extensor and a flexor muscle ensure that the robotic leg can move in both directions. These electro-hydraulic actuators, which the researchers call HASELs, are attached to the skeleton by tendons.
The actuators are oil-filled plastic bags, similar to those used to make ice cubes. About half of each bag is coated on either side with a black electrode made of a conductive material. Buchner explains that “as soon as we apply a voltage to the electrodes, they are attracted to each other due to static electricity. Similarly, when I rub a balloon against my head, my hair sticks to the balloon due to the same static electricity.” As one increases the voltage, the electrodes come closer and push the oil in the bag to one side, making the bag overall shorter.
Pairs of these actuators attached to a skeleton result in the same paired muscle movements as in living creatures: as one muscle shortens, its counterpart lengthens. The researchers use a computer code that communicates with high-voltage amplifiers to control which actuators contract, and which extend.
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