• News Views Podcast Learn team about contribute republish AIhub resources AIhub events News Views Podcast Learn News Views Podcast Learn Artificial tendons give muscle-powered robots a boost Researchers have developed artificial tendons for muscle-powered robots. • They attached the rubber band-like tendons (blue) to either end of a small piece of lab-grown muscle (red), forming a “muscle-tendon unit.” Credit: Courtesy of the researchers; edited by MIT News. • Our muscles are nature’s actuators. • The sinewy tissue is what generates the forces that make our bodies move. • In recent years, engineers have used real muscle tissue to actuate “biohybrid robots” made from both living tissue and synthetic parts. • By pairing lab-grown muscles with synthetic skeletons, researchers are engineering a menagerie of muscle-powered crawlers, walkers, swimmers, and grippers.
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