http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/news/2014/11/artificial-muscle-capable-%E2%80%98remembering%E2%80%99-movements-developed?
Researchers from the University of Cambridge have developed artificial muscles which can learn and recall specific movements, the first time that motion control and memory have been combined in a synthetic material.
The ‘muscles’, made from smooth plastic, could eventually be used
in a wide range of applications where mimicking the movement of natural
muscle would be an advantage, such as robotics, aerospace, exoskeletons
and biomedical applications.
Although artificial muscles (actuators) and polymers that can
remember shapes exist, movement and memory have not yet been
incorporated in the same material. Now, University of Cambridge
researchers have produced such a material, known as polymeric
electro-mechanical memory (EMM). Details are published in the journal Materials Chemistry C.
The movement of the artificial muscle developed by the Cambridge
researchers, can be manipulated, stored, read, and restored
independently. It can store, learn, and later recall, a variety of
different movements.
Muscles are the bundles of cells which make movement in animals
possible. There are three different types of muscle in vertebrates such
as ourselves: the cardiac muscles of the heart, the involuntary muscles
which regulate the movements of organs, such as the intestine and
bladder, and the muscles which produce voluntary movement at joints and
on the face.
If a movement in voluntary muscle is repeated enough times, a type
of muscle ‘memory’ is developed. For example, a violinist practising the
same passage over and over will eventually be able to perform the
passage without needing to think about it: the brain develops a
procedural memory of the passage, and can quickly instruct the fingers
to perform the correct movements. This sort of unconscious movement
learned through repetition is known as muscle memory, and is something
we use every day: when riding a bicycle, for instance.
Most artificial muscles are made of polymers which change size or
shape when they receive an electrical signal. Through a number of
mechanisms and stimuli, movement reasonably approximating natural
muscles can be reproduced in an artificial material.
“Muscles in animals have the ability to both control motion and
develop muscle memory in the same tissue, but reproducing these multiple
functions in an artificial muscle has not been possible until now,”
said Dr Stoyan Smoukov of the Department of Materials Science &
Metallurgy, who led the research.
After chemically modifying thin strips of a bendable,
commercially-available material which is used in batteries and fuel
cells, the researchers then programmed a variety of shapes at different
temperatures and taught the artificial muscle to ‘remember’ the movement
associated with each shape. The movements can later be recovered
one-by-one, on demand, by going back to the temperature which was used
to programme it.
The shape and movement transformations are reversible: the restored
states can be cycled thousands of times using low voltage inputs
(between one and two volts). These low voltages and the potential
biocompatibility of the muscles could lead to bio-implantable devices.
The researchers also analysed the dependence of the movement on the
amount of mechanical programming, and the mechanism underlying the
muscles’ behaviour.
Based on the success of the proof-of-concept material they
developed, the Cambridge researchers are now developing a general
methodology to create muscles which incorporate different types of
functionality.
Source: University of Cambridge
No comments:
Post a Comment