Synthetic Muscle Made of Fishing Line is 100 Times Stronger Than the Real Thing

The newest material used to make artificial muscle can lift more than 100 times more than the meaty stuff you have stuck to your skeleton. It forms a sinewy band that's flexible, dynamic, and can be reused millions of times. No, we're not talking about carbon nanotubes, shape-memory metal, or some hyper-strong liquid alloy. This super-material is ordinary fishing line.

A team of material scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas have just discovered a new way to create powerful artificial muscles—synthetic sinew that forcefully expands and contracts on command—from low-cost, everyday fibers such as fishing line and high-tension sewing thread. In a study published today in the journal Science¸ the researchers described how they're doing it: by twisting the materials into springy and energy-dense coils.

Source (PM)



Prosthetic hands that can feel, contact lenses that can monitor glucose levels, and now synthetic muscles made from inexpensive materials that are better than natural stuff, near future looks interesting to enhance humanity life quality.

But by far the most impressive aspect of the muscles is their low cost. Because Baughman and his colleagues are using cheaply available resources, pound for pound their muscles are hundreds to thousands of times cheaper than those made from promising but expensive materials like shape-memory alloy or carbon nanotube yarn. This is one reason Baughman expects almost immediate commercialization of this new finding. Although he rattled off dozens of various applications he could imagine for these new muscles, including building facial muscles for humanoid robots and crafting exoskeleton suits—he admits the muscles could find their first practical use in devices like automatically heat-regulated window shutters and ventilation systems, or blended into clothing that reacts to temperature by opening and closing pores in the textile.

Or to have synthetic overlords controlling every aspect of our existence , interesting inventions coming everyday nonetheless, the world may look very different in 20-30 years

Once they get the Robo-prosthetics tech right,
i'll be the first one in line for a new left arm.

Yes, I will be modding it to be able to use robo crush hand on things

reply to post by EyesOpenMouthShut


I think this could be use more easily as the muscle of an exoskeleton for old folks, like researchers in Japan are trying to do (Japan is the place with more elderly population in average)

Ill wait for my crysis suit

reply to post by Indigent


If Viagra was a software, that would be the hardware.

Trueman
reply to post by Indigent

 

If Viagra was a software, that would be the hardware.

ummm, ahhhhhh, uuuummmmm... you know what you refer is not muscle tissue right?

Indigent

Trueman
reply to post by Indigent

 

If Viagra was a software, that would be the hardware.

ummm, ahhhhhh, uuuummmmm... you know what you refer is not muscle tissue right?

Chicken nuggets neither, but people don't mind at all.

nuggets ...left hand...crush .......
nope.
can't see it

fishing line should stay where it belongs ...on a pole....
no..wait...

maybe the picture is better off a little bit opake

I wish i could understand how a tech topic turn in such a phallic way.

ATS never stop to amaze me

Wow, I remember seeing this on google news, or yahoo, but I didn't get a chance to read about the tech. This is an amazing break through. So simple, and yet so amazingly useful. This could vastly change our world.

So, by heating and cooling these twisted fibers, they expand and contract. I wonder how fast they move. Heating is easy to do, but how about the cooling part. Electricity can be used to cool stuff, I wonder how that could be integrated.

I find it hard to believe that these strings could react as fast as muscle, but maybe they can.

We are getting closer to becoming Ghosts in the shell. I thought those movies were great.

Now where can I get a cyber brain?

reply to post by Indigent


Now all they need to do is make stronger tendons and bones so these muscles will actually work without all of us breaking our own arms in half.

I feel sorry for some one who gets excited watching porno with a modified arm.

Might hurt.