“A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Germany and at the University of Boulder in Colorado in the US has found a new way to exploit the principles of spiders’ joints to drive articulated robots without any bulky components and connectors, which weigh down the robot and reduce portability and speed,” reports Techexplore.com.

“Their slender and lightweight simple structures impress by enabling a robot to jump 10 times its height. The high performance is enabled by Spider-inspired Electrohydraulic Soft-actuated joints—SES joints in short. The joints can be used in many different configurations—not just when creating an arachno-bot. In their paper -published in the journal Advanced Science– the scientists demonstrate a bidirectional joint, a multi-segmented artificial limb, and a three-fingered gripper, which can easily pick up delicate objects. All creations are lightweight, simple in their design, and exhibit high performance making them ideal for robotic systems that need to move rapidly and interact with many different environments.”

“The researchers developed their SES joints based on the HASEL technology which had previously been invented by the team to build artificial muscles. SES joints mimic a spider-inspired exoskeletal mechanism comprised of both rigid and softer elements, which function similarly to the animal’s leg extension through the use of hydraulic forces.”

“They built a flexible pouch made of thin plastic films (either polyester or polypropylene will do) which they filled with a liquid dielectric—a vegetable-based oil. They then placed electrodes on each side of the pouch. These liquid-filled pockets serve as actuators, in which the hydraulic power is generated through electrostatic forces. The pouch is attached to a rotary joint. When a high voltage is applied between the electrodes, the electrostatic forces cause the liquid dielectric to shift inside the pouch and the joint to flex. SES joints are capable of rotating up to 70 degrees, causing high torques, and can easily restore back to the starting position.”

The use of a contracting dialectric pouch results in a function similar to the function of bundles of muscle fibers in mammals, and may eventually be adapted to uses in prosthetic devices for humans.