Inverse hydraulic artificial muscles powered with EHD fiber pumps

A demonstration of a fiber muscle, with both pump and actuator in fiber form. The video starts by highlighting the flexibility of the whole fiber, before showing the fast time response of a single fiber actuator. A bundle of three fibers then demonstrates the load bearing capacity, frequency response and repeatability.
Read the paper here: www.science.or...
More information here: www.epfl.ch/la...
More fiber pump videos here: • Fiber pumps
This work was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation: www.snf.ch/en
Video produced by EPFL LMTS

[@Scott_C]

Would love to see how an "inverse hydraulic artificial muscle" is built.

[@tigga5117]

Search for "300% Strain Artificial Muscles" and youll find a video from Stanford that explains it. They use it with pneumatics but the working principle is pretty much the same as using hydraulics like in this video

[@tkenji188]

Wait, 6.4kV is not something you can carry in a backpack. How many amps do they take?

[@tigga5117]

The power consumption of such EHD pumps is typically quite low. For that reson even "small" power supplies could work but actually youd like the pumps to be way stronger. High voltage isnt easy, yes.. On the bright side you can use smaller gauge wires (lower current). Insulation is very important though. High voltage in general is also more efficient then high current applications because of the lower thermal energy loss. Like with everything there are pros and cons.

[@DavidElliottLewis]

Why is there no sound?

[@tigga5117]

Because there are no real moving parts and thus the actuation itself is more or less silent I believe

[@yakut9876]

The moving hydraulic fluid acts as an absorber of vibrations that may arise.