So when do I get my Doctor Octopus style robo arms? :-)
Origami-inspired soft artificial muscles
31–40 of 60 posts
Re: Origami-inspired soft artificial muscles
#32It looks like this is some kind of pneumatic system, and IMHO if you're calculating strength/weight you would need to take into account the weight of the air compressor, to have a fair comparison with biological muscle. Not to mention the fact that air compressors need to have an energy source, and are quite noisy.
I think that's a bit unfair. The importance of the weight of the muscles is how much has to be on a movable part. The compressor does not, depending on your requirements. It certainly doesn't need to move in the same way.
Re: Origami-inspired soft artificial muscles
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "big new thing" about this is that it doesn't use compressed air the way traditional air muscles do. It doesn't use compressed air at all. You're probably going to say that vacuum pumps are noisy/heavy next. But this doesn't need traditional high-grade vacuum pumps, very low grade will work. And of course it is entirely moot for industrial machines that stand in place. From what I can tell the trick comes from th…
If you get something working I'd love to see a how-to article.
Heck, you could probably replicate it somewhat with a plastic baggie, some bits of cardboard, and a straw. Add some duct tape and hot glue, and you'd be set.
Re: Origami-inspired soft artificial muscles
#34I did my PhD with this group (Rob Wood). When I was there, these kind of actuators, and the robots you would put them in, were just getting started. It's great to see how far they've come. One of the great benefits of these soft actuators is that you can embed them in soft structures and then get smooth movement in multiple directions. Instead of a rigid robotic arm with a few degrees of freedom, you could build some…
Well, since you've worked with those kinds of actuators I hope you can clarify something I wasn't sure about in the article: can the same muscle perform different actions? For example, could you have a muscle that can bend to the left, then to the right of some central line?
I'm asking because the statement [edit: in the article] that "designing how the skeleton folds defines how the whole structure moves" makes me think that perhaps the range of motions each muscle can perform is limited by construction.
Ahem. That's not to downplay the obvious usefuleness of such a device. As far as I'm concerned t's the first time in ages I find a robotics piece of news cool.
Re: Origami-inspired soft artificial muscles
#35"Artifical muscles can also lift, grip and twist objects."
I want to see it crush as well.
Re: Origami-inspired soft artificial muscles
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
So if we took away 1% of that 1000x it's own weight it would be able to lift it? It can't. It will never be able to. Only thing I got out of my engineering dynamics class - ropes don't lift. Well, that and jokes about couple moments. A lift is not a hold. A human can hold a ton of weight against gravity, but that's not them lifting it. See the squat. You can put a huge amount of weight on your back compared to the am…
A human can hold several loaded shipping containers stacked upon each other against gravity. The human will be very flat and leaking all over, but it will be holding the containers.
"I guess he kind of bench pressed that steam roller... kind of."
Re: Origami-inspired soft artificial muscles
#37It looks like this is some kind of pneumatic system, and IMHO if you're calculating strength/weight you would need to take into account the weight of the air compressor, to have a fair comparison with biological muscle. Not to mention the fact that air compressors need to have an energy source, and are quite noisy.
The "big new thing" about this is that it doesn't use compressed air the way traditional air muscles do. It doesn't use compressed air at all. You're probably going to say that vacuum pumps are noisy/heavy next. But this doesn't need traditional high-grade vacuum pumps, very low grade will work. And of course it is entirely moot for industrial machines that stand in place. From what I can tell the trick comes from th…
It could.
If you want to re-extend one of the muscles QUICK ;)
Re: Origami-inspired soft artificial muscles
#38I did my PhD with this group (Rob Wood). When I was there, these kind of actuators, and the robots you would put them in, were just getting started. It's great to see how far they've come. One of the great benefits of these soft actuators is that you can embed them in soft structures and then get smooth movement in multiple directions. Instead of a rigid robotic arm with a few degrees of freedom, you could build some…
Well, since you've worked with those kinds of actuators I hope you can clarify something I wasn't sure about in the article: can the same muscle perform different actions? For example, could you have a muscle that can bend to the left, then to the right of some central line? I'm asking because the statement [edit: in the article] that "designing how the skeleton folds defines how the whole structure moves" makes me t…
It does seem from the description that only one motion is possible for one of these muscles. Full motion would require combining multiple muscles with complementary motion, similar to the way the body works.
The speed seems much slower than that of an actual muscle. Is this inherent in the technology or just a limitation of the current prototypes?
Re: Origami-inspired soft artificial muscles
#39It looks like this is some kind of pneumatic system, and IMHO if you're calculating strength/weight you would need to take into account the weight of the air compressor, to have a fair comparison with biological muscle. Not to mention the fact that air compressors need to have an energy source, and are quite noisy.
Potentially. But then for biological, you'd also need to include whatever system generated the ATP, oxygen, electric impulse, etc to power the muscle, right? IMO, the crucial piece of information: how much pneumatic energy is needed per unit force for one of these, compared to that of more naive designs.
Given that the actuators are so light, it means that you don't need the extra power required to lift the actuator itself.
They indicate that they've had a 1000x increase, which means that to lift 1kg you only need force to lift 1.001kg instead of 2kg
Re: Origami-inspired soft artificial muscles
#40Neat!.
I am working on artificial muscle as a side project[0], especially the kind you can (cheaply) 3d-print.
Earlier work used these sorts of soft actuators similar to regular muscle-- you make a bunch of actuators that move in a particular direction, strap them to a skeleton, and then activate them in various combinations to move the skeleton.
3D printing, on the other hand, allows you to build more complex actuators (that don't necessarily apply force in a line). Origami-inspired designs (particularly rigid origami[1]) are related, in that you can design a particular folding pattern and have it fold and unfold to exert force in a particular way.
I was originally inspired by the work on artificial muscles actuated by a phase change (liquid to gas, with attendant increase in pressure) from Columbia[2]. Some combination of the two techniques might be better than either alone, allowing for fast-twitch soft actuators to fill the roles that servos stepper motors have previously occupied. Plus, they're likely to be cheaper in general, customizable to specific tasks, and probably safer in situations where humans might get in the way of the robot's motion.
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0. Most of the time I am working on reinforcement learning theory, and so building an actuator with difficult-to-model dynamics seems strange. However there's a lot RL could offer here, either learning how to control those dynamics from scratch or refining an existing model.
1. Wikipedia and its related/external links have a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigid_origami If you just want a cool example of What Rigid Origami Can Do For You, check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miura_fold
2. See the press release: http://engineering.columbia.edu/news/hod-lipson-lifelike-rob... and the associated paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00685-3