How a team of engineers are creating bendable nylon muscles for robots

Robotic researchers are always looking to make robots more life-like, and a key step in doing this is to create bendable muscle fibers just like in humans, and engineers at MIT are already making it happen. According to the team, they’ve created a cheap, applicable way to make bending muscle fibers using nylon fiber. 

Impressively, the synthetic nylon fiber can be given any shape and can provide linear muscular activity, which is vital in creating a fully-functional muscle, though complex bending in something such as human fingers still proves to be a challenge. Although there are existing structures which can be used to achieve these bending applications, such as carbon nanotube yarns, they’re expensive for commercial use.

MIT’s process utilizes nylon fiber by using its unique properties which make it shrink in length but expand in diameter. By harnessing this shrinking property, the team managed to create motion without using any moving piece.

Additionally, the researchers used another property known as “limiting,” where the material is cooled on one side and heated on the other to cause disproportionate cooling and consequently leading to bending. According to project leader Seyed Mohammed Mirvakili, you need a combination of these properties, high strain, and low thermal conductivity.

To get things moving, a nylon fishing line was compressed and made into a rectangle or square. Next, the fiber was bent by heating on one side, and the same heating was also directed to create the figure of eights and circles from the fibers. The team believes this technology could be used in the future to create self-adjusting catheters, or even tracking systems on energy devices.

Watch the video below for more information.

This research was originally detailed in Advanced Materials Journal .