Wearable Robots to Help Lift Heavy Weight

Wearable Robots to Help Lift Heavy Weight

wearable robots

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MIT researchers are working to create “soft,” wearable robots. Robotics researcher Shuguang Li and his team develop the material for a new breed of robot – one that’s light and flexible but also two to three times stronger than a human being. Made of nylon and plastic and powered by compressed air, the “artificial muscles” have folds inside them. They can grip, lift and twist everything from a flower to a tire.

According to robohub.org, the origami-inspired artificial muscles add strength to soft robots, allowing them to lift objects that are up to 1,000 times their own weight using only air or water pressure.

The research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

But along with these advancements, the researchers are also discovering potentially dangerous drawbacks, according to cbsnews.com. They found a way to trick the computer by making a toy loggerhead turtle look like something very different and alarming from a security standpoint. “It’s currently 66 percent confident that it’s looking at a rifle,” MIT doctoral student Anish Athalye said. “Can a terrorist build a bomb that the computer thinks is a bouquet of flowers?”. “Yeah so,” Athalye  said. “I feel like it’s good that this is happening now, before these systems are very widely deployed.”

Google created the program tricked by researchers at MIT. But in a statement, the company said it welcomes efforts to identify security risks.”