ROBOTS could really start to flex their muscles thanks to a new material that, weight-for-weight, is as strong as human muscle fibre yet as stretchy as rubber.
Ray Baughman of the University of Texas at Dallas and colleagues have developed a way to make ribbons of tangled carbon nanotubes. The ribbons more than double in width when a voltage is applied across them, and return to normal once it is removed. Baughman says bundles of such ribbons could act as artificial muscle fibres in a robot, expanding and contracting to create movement.
The team make the ribbons by growing clumps of nanotubes resembling a dense thicket of bamboo stalks. They then stick a length of adhesive to the sides of the clumps and pull gently to draw out a long, thin film of tangled tubes (Science, ).
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Though stretchy across its width, the material is extremely stiff and strong lengthwise 鈥� the direction in which the nanotubes are aligned. It maintains these properties in temperatures ranging from -196 掳C to more than 1500 掳C, meaning a robot equipped with nanotube 鈥渕uscles鈥� could function in extreme conditions.
鈥淎 robot equipped with nanotube 鈥榤uscles鈥� would be able to function in extreme conditions鈥�
Because the material is only one-thousandth the density of human muscle, a large volume of it would be needed to match the strength of, say, the human arm, says Boris Yakobson, a materials scientist at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
