Nanotech Research Works Toward Artificial Muscles

An anonymous reader writes "Nanotech researchers are developing artificial muscles that convert chemical energy to mechanical energy. This ambitious project aims at making an artificial muscles from conducting polymers and carbon nanotubes that are chemically powered, like natural muscles, and exceed the force generation, contraction and speed of their natural counterpart. This work will lead to advanced limbs for amputees and robots."

Comments

Re:Super strong muscles

[scheme]

And what about joints, could they handle the extra stress of markedly increased muscle strength? Like you go to pick up your car and your arms pop out of their sockets.

Which is why the next step is obviously artifical bones, ligaments, and tendons.

What about implants?

[millennial]

Yes, I'm odd. This is the first thing that came to my mind. What if someone wanted to add a limb? I'm pretty sure it could be possible. We could construct a framework of artificial bone, build the artificial muscles and tendons, implant artificial nerves, and (much like when a person gets a limb transplant) graft it into the nervous system.

I'm no expert in this field - I'm merely speculating. Feel free to totally bash my idea. Is this even possible, though?

Re:What about implants?

[CAIMLAS]

Your nervous system is not like your average computer, where you can swap out one component (say, a 2-bus RAID card) and put another one in (a 4-bus card).

Your nervous system is intricately linked to every other part of your body: bones, muscles, balance, brain, immune system, skin - you name it. It has also grown with you for your entire life, adapting to the minute changes that take place throughout your body's growing and aging process. It subtly adapts to these changes. When a person grows too quickly, their nervous system often suffers. I know of a man that grew a full foot in a single year of his adolescence, and as a result his nervous system has given him a permanent "tick", resulting in him never being able to hold his hands steady (as someone shooting a gun, operating sensitive machinery, or performing an operation would require). Many people have varrying degrees of this 'unsteadyness' due to their rate of growth, as well.

I imagine that if you were to actually be able to graft an artificial limb in place, it would still function much like a phantom limb - and that's if it's a proper replacement limb, not an 'extra' limb. I'd think an extra limb(s) would completely throw off a person's internal ballance ("chi", or whatever you want to call it), resulting in the limb being - at best - a clumsy, yet strong, piece of baggage.

No, replacement or additional limbs probably aren't the fields of intended use of this technology - not for a good long time. The more immediate application of this technology is to use it for military purposes: mechanized infantry, at its finest. Forget tanks - a single 6', 240lb man, fully encased in a body suit would completely dominate against our modern "mechanized infantry". Aside from having immense lifting and movement advantages, they'd also probably have reactive armor and a full compliment (think: weapons locker) of weapons. Reactive armor, rocket launchers, built-in navigation systems, several thousand rounds of ammunition for an automatic rifle, half a dozen different supplimentary round types (grenade launcher, explosive rounds, armor-penetrating rounds, etc.), and God knows what else.

Re:What about implants?

[ikkonoishi]

Actually the brain is remarably plastic when dealing with new inputs and outputs.

For instance this little experiment.

Re:What about implants?

[danila]

The problem is that many people have a very strong immune system in their brain. Just like we have leucocytes in our bloodstream protecting us from bacteria and viruses that our body deems harmful, those people have militant memocytes in their brain protecting them from new ideas and possibilities.

Come other to your grandma and ask what she thinks about adding a 3rd arm to a person so that he can be more productive at work, more proficient in his hobby, for aesthetical reasons or so that he can masturbate while groping his girlfriend's tits. :) No offence if you have a counterculture hippy grandma that is heavily in bodymods, but I bet an average person would be strongly averse to the idea of extra limbs.

This all can be very well structured in terms of Future Shock Levels as put forward by Eliezer Yudkowsky. "A Shock Level measures the high-tech concepts you can contemplate without being impressed, frightened, blindly enthusiastic - without exhibiting future shock." He suggests 5 levels (quoting):

• SL0: The legendary average person is comfortable with modern technology - not so much the frontiers of modern technology, but the technology used in everyday life. Most people, TV anchors, journalists, politicians.
  
• SL1: Virtual reality, living to be a hundred, "The Road Ahead", "To Renew America", "Future Shock", the frontiers of modern technology as seen by Wired magazine. Scientists, novelty-seekers, early-adopters, programmers, technophiles.
  
• SL2: Medical immortality, interplanetary exploration, major genetic engineering, and new ("alien") cultures. The average SF fan.
  
• SL3: Nanotechnology, human-equivalent AI, minor intelligence enhancement, uploading, total body revision, intergalactic exploration. Extropians and transhumanists.
  
• SL4: The Singularity, Jupiter Brains, Powers, complete mental revision, ultraintelligence, posthumanity, Alpha-Point computing, Apotheosis, the total evaporation of "life as we know it." Singularitarians and not much else.

Speaking of implants, an SL0 person is probably comfortable with replacing a bone or a joint. SL1 is ok with artificial limbs for those who have something happen with the originals. SL2 would not mind replacing perfectly good natural hands. SL3 would agree with going away with the humanness requirement for the body and just using something that suits the task well. And an SL4 accepts we don't need a body at all.

So what you are suggesting is completely impossible today and perfectly possible in the medium-term (10-50 years). However the reaction to your proposal is not determined by the feasibility of the idea, but by the population of anti-memes in the brain of the listener.

Something similar

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I used to play with Flexinol, which is a memory alloy. Not really the same technology, but it was fun playing with this stuff.

Sounds more realistic

[karvind]

This project sounds more realistic and well thought out than the Space elevator dream.

Few issues which still need to be resolved:

(a) How to place and grow nanotubes precisely ? Even after 14 years we struggle with that.

(b) How does carbon nanotube interacts with biology in human body ? What are the side effects ?

(c) Need to find an easy way of making conducting vs semiconducting nanotubes.

(d) Fuel cell efficiency. They have only said that they can convert the chemical energy to mechanical energy, but how well ?

(e) Ethical issue: This may not be a big deal if that person with artificial limbs can generate 100 times more force with no effort and break anyone's neck. But I am sure once we start augmenting human brain with more computational power (may be carbon nanotubes are faster than neurons, use them !!), then we may have to rethink !!

Amputees and SOLDIERS!

[Colgate2003]

The real driving force behind this research is the desire for a nano-enabled soldier of the future. They hope to use these as exo-muscles in combat suits to allow soldiers to literally "leap tall buildings in a single bound."

The MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies is working on this right now, but they don't see it being available for use for 30 years or so. I recently attended a lecture at MIT entitled "Nanotechnology: From Promise to Profitablility" that was almost entirely focused on military applications.

Amputees will certainly benefit, but that's not why the money is there for this research...

Re:Amputees and SOLDIERS!

[foniksonik]

And this surprises you somehow?

Nearly every major leap in technology in every discipline has been funded for and by the US military.

After the fact it is commercialized and improved upon so as to become a consumer attractive product, meaning smaller, more energy efficient and less buggy... iteratively over several generations so that by the time we see it it doesn't look anything like the original.

The latest trend is for the military to start buying these cheaper more efficient versions from commercial suppliers... but the original tech is still developed early by the military and military contractors/university programs.

Other Important Benefits

[richardmilhousnixon]

I've been working with technology similar to this for the past year at University of Washington. I think a lot of people are overlooking some of the most important benefits of this type of actuator. Robustness is a very critical aspect of any mechanical device. With current hydraulics and pneumatics, a small dent or bend will render the entire device unusable. With an artificial muscle, half the device could be ripped off and it could still function with a limited capacity.

Imagine a hydraulic actuator on a modern plane for instance. It would be nice to be able to still be able to control the aircraft's ailerons, flaps, rudder, and elevator even if significant damage occured to mechanical components.

That's one of the biggest differences between man and man-made machines. People can be injured and keep going (watch any Arnold movie). A machine, on the other hand, is pretty much all or nothing (except in Arnold movies).

The First Step...

[potpie]

Has anybody read the Space Odyssey series? I don't remember which book it's in, but Arthur Clarke once talks about the history of the creators of the black boxes. They were a normal civilization that became extremely advanced and eventually built large ships that could take them all over the universe. But they could also incorporate the mechanics and electronics into themselves, and incorporate (from the latin "corpus, corporis, n." meaning body: particularly effective in this sense!) themselves into their machines until eventually, they were their own machines, constantly improving upon themselves. It goes on to explain that they were able to transcend matter entirely and exist in a way we cannot quite comprehend.

Also, in the book 3001, Clarke predicts braincap machines that add the abilities of a computer to whoever wears them.

I for one welcome the new experience of becoming the overlords of the universe. How long until we can transcend matter and build conscienceness-inspiring black boxes?

Re:mnb Re:Super strong muscles

[kesuki]

Grand parent could have been assuming you were standing on the grass, or could have been referring to your shoes... however you're entirely correct, concrete and asphault can easily withstand the psi of a person picking up even a bus... you don't run into a problem with ground deformation (beneath asphault) until you exceed 40 tons/Sq inch so, unless you're picking up a 400 ton dump truck, you're not at issue with PSI ratings. oh hey, and if you want to walk without deforming the ground a solid inch of tempered steel will do for single, loaded 400 ton truck, but you'd need titanium to handle a loaded 400 ton truck in EACH hand. (this assumes of course your bones are made of solid titanium, and your tendons are made of carbon nanotubes)

Neuromorphic tail

[FleaPlus]

Check out these folks, who put together a prehensile robotic tail. The apparatus registers EMG signals from skin electrodes and uses them to control the tail.