Muscle-fiber inspired pneumatic artificial muscles for multiple-mode actuations
2021-05-04
(Press-News.org) Biological organisms (such as elephant trunks, octopus tentacles, and human tongues) show remarkable dexterity and self-adaptation in unstructured environments, relying on the multiple-mode actuations of the skeleton-free muscular hydrostats. In general, muscular hydrostats mainly consist of well-ranged active 3D muscle-fiber arrays bundled by passive connective tissues (Fig. 1A). By selectively actuating the active 3D muscle-fiber arrays, muscular hydrostats can generate elongation, bending, contraction and twisting. Producing such multiple-mode actuation of muscular hydrostats is an interesting but long-lasting challenge in the field of robotics.
During past decades, many artificial muscles (such as dielectric elastomer actuators, pneumatic elastomer actuators, shape memory alloy/polymers) have been well developed to generate various actuations, which have been widely used in soft robotic systems. However, existed artificial muscles usually suffer from single actuation mode, such as elongation, bending, contraction, or twisting. Therefore, the development of artificial muscles with multiple-mode actuations remains elusive.
To address this challenge, inspired by the 3D muscle-fiber arrays in muscular hydrostats, a group from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, led by Professors Guoying Gu and Xiangyang Zhu, reported a class of multiple-mode pneumatic artificial muscles, called MAIPAMs, that are capable of multiple-mode actuations, like muscular hydrostats. The MAIPAMs mainly consist of active 3D elastomer-balloon arrays bundled by a passive elastomer membrane (Fig. 1B). When the compressed air is applied, each active elastomer balloon can generate an elongation while the passive elastomer membrane can transform the elongation into multiple-mode actuations, including elongation, bending, and spiraling (Fig. 1C). For the design and fabrication, a planar design and one-step rolling fabrication approach (Fig. 1D-E) is proposed to build the active 3D elastomer-balloon arrays of the MAIPAMs. In this sense, different MAIPAMs can be created to achieve complex actuation modes, such as parallel elongation-bending-spiraling actuations, parallel 10 bending actuations for omnidirectionally recording videos in a confined space, and cascaded elongation-bending-spiraling actuations for gripping. Owing to the scalable advantages of the planar design and rolling fabrication approach, MAIPAMs can also integrate limiting layers for contraction and twisting actuation modes, or compliant electrodes for self-sensing. They finally demonstrate that the MAIPAMs shows promising potentials in the field of soft robotics, such as detecting environments, manipulating or gripping objects, and climbing inside a pipe-line.
INFORMATION:
This research received funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality, and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation.
See the article:
Jiang Zou, Miao Feng, Ningyuan Ding, Peinan Yan, Haipeng Xu, Dezhi Yang, Nicholas X Fang, Guoying Gu, and Xiangyang Zhu
Muscle-fiber array inspired, multiple-mode, pneumatic artificial muscles through planar design and one-step rolling fabrication
National Science Review, 2021, nwab048, https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwab048
The National Science Review is the first comprehensive scholarly journal released in English in China that is aimed at linking the country's rapidly advancing community of scientists with the global frontiers of science and technology. The journal also aims to shine a worldwide spotlight on scientific research advances across China.
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-05-04
A Pediatric Policy Council state of the art plenary session during the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2021 Virtual Meeting explored the role of public health research in iterative policymaking to reduce gun violence in America.
The toll of gun violence on young people represents one of the most significant public health challenges facing contemporary America. In recent years, firearm-related injury and death has made headlines routinely, including mass shootings at schools, public festivals, and places of worship, while daily occurrences of gun violence affect local communities.
Gun ...
2021-05-04
Originally formulated in the context of condensed matter physics, the Haldane model is an influential model of a two-dimensional topological insulator. It has also been realized in classical-wave metamaterial analogues of topological insulator, such as photonic crystals, acoustic crystals, and electric LC circuits.
Recently, theorists have shown that a modification to the Haldane model exhibits the novel phenomenon of antichiral edge sates, according to E. Colomés and M. Franz, scholars at Department of Physics and Astronomy and Quantum Matter Institute, University of British Columbia. Unlike the chiral edge states associated with the standard Haldane model, antichiral edge states possess the same propagation direction on opposite edges of a sample; the current carried by the edge ...
2021-05-04
Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues elsewhere, have used gene therapy to prevent learning and memory loss in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD), a key step toward eventually testing the approach in humans with the neurodegenerative disease.
The findings are published online in advance of the June 11, 2021 issue of Molecular Therapy-Methods & Clinical Development.
AD is characterized by the accumulation of clumps of misfolded proteins called amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tau tangles, both of which impair cell signaling and promote neuronal death. Current AD treatments targeting plaques and tangles address ...
2021-05-04
Polarization-sensitive photodetectors, based on anisotropic semiconductors, have exhibited wide advantages in specialized applications, such as astronomy, remote sensing, and polarization-division multiplexing. For the active layer of polarization-sensitive photodetectors, recent researches focus on two-dimensional (2D) organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites, where inorganic slabs and organic spacers are alternatively arranged in parallel layered structures. Compared with inorganic 2D materials, importantly, the solution accessibility of hybrid perovskites makes it possible to obtain their large crystals at low cost, offering exciting opportunities to incorporate crystal out-of-plane anisotropy for polarization-sensitive photodetection. However, limited by ...
2021-05-04
During the next 10 years, an estimated half-million individuals in the U.S. with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are expected to transition from adolescence to adulthood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That means thousands of these young adults will likely fall into a widening and potentially devastating gap in a variety of services--because they're too old for high school, but may not qualify for Medicaid-funded services, social work researchers at Case Western Reserve University predict in a new study.
The team of researchers from the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences interviewed 174 families from Northeast Ohio to examine the use of health, medical and social services for youth with autism--from 16 to 30 years old--and ...
2021-05-04
HOUSTON - (May 4, 2021) - Private equity investment in hospitals has grown substantially in the 21st century, and it accelerated in the years leading up the COVID-19 pandemic. Now a new study of short-term acute care hospitals acquired by private equity firms finds they not only have higher markups and profit margins, they're also slower to expand their staffs.
In a study published in Health Affairs, a multi-institutional team of investigators led by Dr. Anaeze C. Offodile II, a nonresident scholar in the Center for Health and Biosciences at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, the Gilbert Omenn Fellow at the National Academy of Medicine and an assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, examined ...
2021-05-04
ORLANDO, Fla. (May 3, 2021) - Researchers have identified a gene expressed in children with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that could serve as a new immunotherapy treatment target, according to a new study published today in Blood Advances, a journal of the American Society of Hematology. The study, co-authored by researchers with Nemours Children's Health System, outlines the process and potential path for new immunotherapy drugs that improve survival and reduce treatment-related toxicity in children with AML.
Leukemia is the most common cancer in children and teens, and AML accounts for nearly one-fourth of those cases. AML is a fast-growing cancer that typically starts in immature bone marrow cells.
"Using ...
2021-05-04
Coronavirus (CoVs) infection in animals and humans is not new. The earliest papers in the scientific literature of coronavirus infection date to 1966. However, prior to SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2, very little attention had been paid to coronaviruses.
Suddenly, coronaviruses changed everything we know about personal and public health, and societal and economic well-being. The change led to rushed analyses to understand the origins of coronaviruses in humans. This rush has led to a thus far fruitless search for intermediate hosts (e.g., civet in SARS-CoV and pangolin in SARS-CoV-2) rather than focusing on the important work, which has always been surveillance of ...
2021-05-04
When was the last time you repainted your car? Redesigned your coffee mug collection? Gave your shoes a colorful facelift?
You likely answered: never, never, and never. You might consider these arduous tasks not worth the effort. But a new color-shifting "programmable matter" system could change that with a zap of light.
MIT researchers have developed a way to rapidly update imagery on object surfaces. The system, dubbed "ChromoUpdate" pairs an ultraviolet (UV) light projector with items coated in light-activated dye. The projected light alters the reflective properties of the dye, creating colorful new images in just a few minutes. The advance could accelerate product development, enabling product designers to churn through ...
2021-05-04
Since it was first introduced in 2016, transparent wood has been developed by researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology as an innovative structural material for building construction. It lets natural light through and can even store thermal energy.
The key to making wood into a transparent composite material is to strip out its lignin, the major light-absorbing component in wood. But the empty pores left behind by the absence of lignin need to be filled with something that restores the wood's strength and allows light to permeate.
In earlier versions of the composite, researchers at KTH's Wallenberg Wood Science Centre used fossil-based polymers. Now, the researchers have successfully tested an eco-friendly alternative: limonene acrylate, a monomer made ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Muscle-fiber inspired pneumatic artificial muscles for multiple-mode actuations
