Muscle coordination can be mimicked by electric motors – it could lead to improved robots
Muscle coordination can be mimicked by electric motors – it could lead to improved robots
Researchers at the University of Bristol built a physical model using ordinary electric motors to simulate muscle tasks. Published in the Royal Society journal Interface, their results show that muscle-like coordination can emerge spontaneously from the setup rather than being programmed continuously. The study suggests these findings could help improve robot function by mimicking how muscles adapt to changing loads without a central conductor.
The study presents a physical model using electric motors and a shared mechanical backbone to demonstrate that muscle-like coordination can emerge spontaneously without continuous central control, suggesting potential design principles for soft robotics and artificial muscles.
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help bring robotics closer to biology, opening the way to more organic machines, whose bodies help shape how they move and adapt. Hermes Bloomfield-Gadêlha , Mathematician, University of Bristol This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .
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omplex gearing to keep everything stable under loads. It works, but it can be fragile and prone to errors. A compilation of task failures by Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot (The Independent). Our physical model of muscle, where coordination emerges as a property of the setup, suggests that simpler actuators for robotics are possible. This is exactly the kind of fundamental design that researchers have been chasing for s
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oft robots (which use flexible materials) and artificial muscles for robotics. Muscle may be an example of coordination without a conductor. Thousands of molecular motors working together, not because each one is individually controlled, but because the soft structure around them helps guide their collective behaviour. Our findings suggest that robotics could begin to harness the same principle. In future, this could
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