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University of Bristol reproduces muscle coordination using ordinary electric motors
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A research team at the University of Bristol built a tabletop physical device that simulates muscle contraction using a row of ordinary electric motors coupled to one another through a shared mechanical skeleton; the results were published in the Royal Society journal Interface. In the experiments, the motors intermittently contacted the skeleton to transmit force and did not communicate directly with one another, yet muscle-like behaviors spontaneously emerged, including a load-velocity relationship, more units participating as load increased, and coordination waves. The motors in the device pull on a thick fluid, producing resistance similar to the viscous load experienced by biological motors within muscle. On this basis, the researchers suggest that the coordination observed in muscle may simply be a property arising from the structure of this device itself; in the future, it may be possible to make robots more like biological organisms, so that body structure participates in determining how they move and adapt. This prospect for robotic applications is currently only the researchers' conjecture.
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- University of Bristol uses ordinary electric motors to replicate muscle coordination, potentially improving robots
A University of Bristol team built a tabletop physical model simulating muscle contraction using a row of ordinary electric motors coupled to each other through a shared mechanical skeleton, with results published in the Royal Society journal Interface. In the experiments, the motors made intermittent contact with the skeleton to transmit force, and without direct communication, muscle-like behaviors spontaneously emerged, including a load-velocity relationship, more units participating as load increased, and coordination waves. The researchers believe this approach, in which coordination is handled by the structure itself, could help improve how robots are actuated.
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