Researchers from the MIT Media Lab in collaboration with the Polytechnic of Bari develop a new type of artificial muscle that is very surprising and that can redefine the way robots are built, instead of rigid motors, gears and heavy structures, they created fibers that contract and expand much closer to a real muscle.

The most interesting thing is how these fibers work, they use an electrofluidic system where an internal fluid is moved by a type of microscopic pump that has no moving parts, this allows the system to operate silently, lightly and extremely compactly.

Unlike traditional systems that depend on large and noisy hydraulic structures, here everything happens within the fiber itself, as if each muscle were a complete system and there is a detail that brings this technology even closer to biology. The fibers are organized in opposing pairs where one contracts while the other expands, exactly as happens with real muscles in the human body.

All this generates a more natural, more efficient and much more adaptable movement. One of the greatest limits of current robotics is in the way in which robots move, traditional motors generate rotational movement that must be converted into linear movement, this creates heavy structures with design limitations, with these fibers, that problem simply disappears, the movement is already born in the correct way and this opens space for lighter, more flexible machines and much closer to human behavior.

Additionally, the system can be adjusted for different applications, more force, more speed or more precision. All controlled through the internal pressure of these fibers, but even if the body of these machines is evolving, there is an invisible limit that defines how far all of that can go, the processing power behind these technologies.