Can you imagine having a toy move on its own, with no battery?
What if your grandfather who had a stroke could move his limbs again?
Over the next few decades this will become more and more popular.
Scientists have been using Electro Active Polymers since the beginning of the 1990’s, but now they want to put them in toys, electronics, prosthetics and paralysis victims. Sounds dangerous right? Well, they’re going to tweak them just a bit in order to be able to put into humans and animals.
There are two main types of these polymers, ionic and dielectric. The ionic polymers have sponge-like substances that when hit with an electrode or voltage, shrink on one side and expand on another. This ionic polymer is used in items that need to bend a lot, needing larger movement. If we put one of this type of muscle it can power a windshield wiper, or two can make a gripper for picking up objects. According to “Muscling in on Motors” this ionic EAP mostly has water, so it can evaporate and cause the muscle to dry up. A Dielectric EAP on the other hand is easier to handle, and can exert more power. When voltage is applied to this EAP one side is positively charged and the other is negatively charged, which creates attraction like magnets that move the muscle. A pack of either of these types of muscle can generate a lot of force, without using up all of its power.
Scientists now have been putting these in victims of strokes, or in people born with syndromes that do not allow them to move facial muscles. They are putting EAP muscles into them and this is letting them smile and blink again. Surgeries for restoring blinking now take 6-10 hours, with little confirmed results. Although they were successful, patients couldn’t blink the eye at the same time as the other, and not at the rate needed to keep the eye moist. EAP’s now are being placed in eyes with carbon grease and a sensor wired over the functioning eyelid. A team in California states that with a sort of “Electronic pacemaker” the eye would blink at a normal rate, in sync with the other eyelid. This breakthrough is said to be available to patients in the next five years.
If they’re putting this in patients for eyes, what do you think could be next that can be replaced by the artificial muscle?
Do you think that discovering more about artificial muscles will lead us more in-depth into the study of artificial life (robots that operate like humans)?
If we do make developments in artificial life, how long do you think it will take us to have complete “human-like” robots?
Here’s a video you can watch on Artifical Muscles.
I think this is a very good idea for people that can’t move that easily. Or just need it because they don’t have the certain bone. It is also really dangerous at the same time. I really don’t think that they should do people’s eyes. Causes imagine what could happen and it would be really weird on how they would blink. It could also really burn someone’s eye and it could also really effect they eye and irate it as well. I think this was a really good article and very interesting. Technology these days are really new and fast. In this article I read they are trying to help babies muscles in there neck so they can keep their head up easlier.
http://www.livestrong.com/article/538604-toys-to-help-your-baby-strengthen-neck-muscles/