Soft robots keep advancing every year. Researchers have now developed fully soft, electrically driven artificial muscles that work like natural muscles. As researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences explain:

The muscle is made using dielectric elastomers, soft materials with good insulating properties, that deform when an electric field is applied. This artificial muscle could be used for prosthetics, surgical robots, and wearable devices, as well as soft robots capable of locomotion and manipulation in natural or human-centric environments.

These muscles use nanoscale particles and soft elastomers to contract like real muscles.

[HT]