#2 Another company, the Shadow Robot Company, has much simpler robotic muscles, that are strong, but also use much less energy (compressed air), are scalable, and are probably more useful at least in humanoid robotics.
In muscles, raw strength is far less important for most things than is repetition and endurance. Energy consumption is also a major factor, which is why there is a difference in the musculature of cold and warm blooded animals.
Small muscles, used in parallel, will probably give a greater return per square inch than just one large muscle.
One of the holy grails of humanoid robotics is the aesthetic reproduction of the human face. Using about 53 muscles, the robotic face should be able to "naturally" make all the expressions of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). With compressed air type muscles on top of the face, and a well-designed control system behind the face, a "standard face" could be created that could be used on most robots, with modest energy consumption. |
