Artificial muscle can lift 1,000 times own weight

AN ARTIFICIAL muscle that can lift 1,000 times its own weight has been created, laying the groundwork for Terminator-like humanoid robots.

Scientists used a 3D printing technique to create a rubber-like synthetic muscle that expands and contracts like its biological counterpart. Heated by a small electric current, it is capable of expanding to nine times its normal size. In tests it demonstrated enormous strength, with a strain density – the amount of energy stored in each gram of a stretched elastic body – 15 times greater than natural muscle.

The device was able to lift 1,000 times its own weight, said the researchers whose work is reported in the journal Nature Communications.

Prof Hod Lipson, from Columbia University in New York, said: “We’ve overcome one of the final barriers to making lifelike robots.”