Origami-inspired artificial muscles give soft robots superpowers

Soft robotics – a field of robotics devoted to compliant devices which mimic living organisms – is considered to hold promise in a range of fields. However, as there is an inherent trade-off between compliant materials and strength, current applications tend to be limited to lightweight applications such as fruit picking.

The new technology, developed by a group from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Harvard’s Wyss Institute, promises to endow soft robots with added strength that could see them used in applications ranging from minimally invasive surgery to deep-sea research.

According to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) each artificial muscle consists of an inner “skeleton” surrounded by air or fluid and sealed inside a bag of “skin,” both of which can be made from a variety of materials.

A vacuum applied to the inside of the bag initiates the muscle’s movement by causing the skin to collapse onto the skeleton, creating tension that drives the motion. The muscle’s movement is determined entirely by the shape and composition of the skeleton.