
A Stretchy, Self-Healing Artificial Muscle - aethertap
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/robotics/robotics-hardware/a-superstretch-selfhealing-artificial-muscle
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Animats
From the article: _It generates just a small amount of force, expanding by 3.6
percent under an electric field of 17.2 millivolts per meter._

That's not much expansion. Why such a weak electric field? If you crank up the
electric field strength (1 watt/meter is easy to reach), does it expand more?
Muscle polymers aren't new; much more powerful ones were developed almost two
decades ago.[1]

This is one of those press-release derived articles. The actual press release
[2] is more helpful. There's a video.[3] The high stretchyness is unusual, and
the self-heading is useful, but the artificial muscle effect is weak. They're
thinking of this more as a skin sensor than a muscle. That could be useful.
Robot skin sensors have been built, but they're too fragile or too insensitive
or too noise sensitive or need to be made in an IC fab and cost too much.

[1]
[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=680638...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=680638&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D680638)
[2] [https://news.stanford.edu/2016/04/18/stanford-researchers-
cr...](https://news.stanford.edu/2016/04/18/stanford-researchers-create-super-
stretchy-self-healing-material-lead-artificial-muscle/) [3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK0KsWHlW2U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK0KsWHlW2U)

~~~
Animats
(Sorry, 1 volt per meter, which is still a weak field.)

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_Adam
I wonder if this style (molecular level) of self healing will ever prove
viable on a large scale.

It's interesting to compare it to natural self healing systems, which heal on
a much higher scale (cellular).

The obvious difference is that artificial materials are molecularly
homogeneous. But that homogenity precludes auto-determination of high level
structure.

For example, my car paint may self heal, but it won't necessarily heal into a
uniform coating because the individual units (in this case molecules) aren't
guided to specific positions. In contrast, biological systems are much more
robust because the placement of individual units (cells) is guided by a larger
system.

That's why we still have a long way before our creations are truly 'self-
healing'. Material science may ultimately not be part of the answer.

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snorrah
Reed Richards would be proud

