robot tech question

[rottistew]

hello all new to this and i'm trying to find information on something my friend talked to me about. he was saying there is a tube or fiber or something like a muscle that is being developed right now to move robot parts like a human body. now what i'm trying to find out is how do i find info about this and what is the name of this muscle fiber whatever that is being developed.
all i know is that it acts like a human muscle and inflates or something to move the arm while that fibers on the oppisite side deflate.
any help with this would be great and thanks in advance.

[HarryBotter]

Are you asking about air muscles?

http://www.shadowrobot.com/airmuscles/overview.shtml

Harry

[rottistew]

thanks for the reply. also do you know anything else that would work in the same manner.

[HarryBotter]

I'm not aware of anything similar. Of course other ways of doing a similar thing would be with hydraulics, nitinol or the series elastic actuators.

Also loads of research going on in this field, spend a bit of time on Google to read up on that.

Harry

[franklin97355]

I think he may have been referring to 'muscle wire' (nitinol)

[Kevin Berry]

As featured in robot magazine's Newsbytes section (pd. pol. ad. :-) ) EPAM is possibly the next great product in this area. www.artificialmuscle.com