Medical Applications of New Electroactive Polymer Artificial Muscles

Ionic electroactive polymer artificial muscles in space applications

A large-scale effort was carried out to test the performance of seven types of ionic electroactive polymer (IEAP) actuators in space-hazardous environmental factors in laboratory conditions. The results substantiate that the IEAP materials are tolerant to long-term freezing and vacuum environments as well as ionizing Gamma-, X-ray, and UV radiation at the levels corresponding to low Earth orbit...

Bio-inspired Underwater Robots Powered by Electroactive Polymer Artificial Muscles

Autonomous under robots are highly demanded in environmental monitoring, intelligent collection, and deep water exploration. Aquatic animals (e.g., fishes, whales, rays, etc.) are ultimate examples of superior swimmers as a result of millions of years of evolution, endowed with a variety of morphological and structural features for moving through water with speed, agility, and efficiency. Recen...

WorldWide ElectroActive Polymers EAP ( Artificial Muscles ) Newsletter

1 FROM THE EDITOR Yoseph Bar-Cohen, [email protected] This issue reports the latest progress in the fields of Electroactive Polymers (EAP) and biomimetics. Some of the latest development at the various lab worldwide is reported in this issue. From the perspective of Biomimetics, it is interesting to note that the SPIE’s Conference on Biomimetics has continued to grow in terms of the number of p...

Artificial Muscles Based on Electroactive Polymers

Polymer Artificial Muscles

The various types of natural muscle are incredible material systems that enable the production of large deformations by repetitive molecular motions. Polymer artificial muscle technologies are being developed that produce similar strains and higher stresses using electrostatic forces, electrostriction, ion insertion, and molecular conformational changes. Materials used include elastomers, condu...