/ News
Scientists create Terminator-style muscle at 1,000 times human strength
American scientists have developed a robotic muscle 1,000 times more powerful than a human’s – using a revolutionary material that fluidly changes its properties.
The invention gives vanadium dioxide amazing, superhero-style powers. Its most striking property is to change shape and structure whenever differing amounts of heat are applied to it.
This made it perfectly suited for creating a torsional motor muscle, as researchers at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found, the Lab’s website reported.
Added to this is the material’s capacity for changing size and other physical characteristics. And when made into a robotic muscle, its estimated strength equals to hurling objects 50 times its weight and five times its length at speeds as fast as 60 milliseconds.
Team leader on the study, Junqiao Wu, said in Berkeley Lab’s statement that they have “created a micro-bimorph dual coil that functions as a powerful torsional muscle, driven thermally or electro-thermally by the phase transition of vanadium dioxide.”
Wu, who is a member of both Berkeley Lab and the Berkeley University’s Materials Science and Engineering department, co-authored the research submitted to the journal Advanced Materials, entitled “Powerful, Multifunctional Torsional Micro Muscles Activated by Phase Transition.”
Vanadium dioxide is not a new material to the electronics industry, already receiving praise for its ability to be both an insulator (at low temperatures) and a conductor (whenever the temperature is raised to above 67 degrees) undergoing what scientists call a temperature-driven phase transition. They say that more energy-efficient optical and electronic devices are definitely in the cards.
And that is not all. For when heated, vanadium dioxide’s crystals begin to rapidly contract along one dimension, while expanding along the other two, showing that a structural phase transition effected by temperature changes is also taking place. This physical property means that in future, using the material for anything from artificial muscles to robotic technologies and complex machinery is practically a given.
As Wu explains, “miniaturizing rotary motors is important for integrated micro-systems and has been intensively pursued over the past decades… the power density of our micro-muscle in combination with its multi-functionality distinguishes it from all current macro- or micro-torsional actuators/motors.”
This opens doors for scientific progress being made almost exponentially, as a series of micro-muscles could be used to build a more complex organism – perhaps even simulate an active neuromuscular system, due to the material’s miraculous property of “proximity sensing and torsional motion [which] allow the device to remotely detect a target and respond by reconfiguring itself to a different shape,” Wu says. “This simulates living bodies where neurons sense and deliver stimuli to the muscles and the muscles provide motion.”
However researchers say it is a little too early to start fearing a Terminator-style rise of the machines, as the mechanism in question is currently the size of a microchip.
Source: http://rt.com/news/robotic-muscle-torsional-berkeley-626/
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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