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Special Issue on Artificial Muscle Actuators for Bioinspired Mechanisms

Guest Editors

Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, USA

Iain Anderson, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Edwin Jager, Linköpings Universitet, Sweden

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Scope

For about 3.5 billion years, nature, through natural selection has been actively experimenting with mechanisms for locomotion, energy harvesting, thermal control, and manipulation. Today, we share a planet with substantially more than 8.7 million species, each inhabiting an ecological niche made possible through proven and robust materials and mechanisms.

Biology's incredible capabilities have always served as a model for inspiration to and mimicking by humans in efforts to improve their life and augment their abilities. Mimicking these capabilities have benefited humans in new materials, structures, systems, mechanisms, processes, algorithms, methods, and tools. There are no gearboxes in nature and many natural mechanisms are soft and flexible too. For instance, the emergence of electroactive polymers (EAP) and their capability to operate as artificial muscles have enabled new possibilities to make devices without gearboxes with soft electroactive actuators making e.g. gear change unnecessary. They are inspiring other biomimetic technologies too in soft energy harvesting and sensing.

This Special Issue focuses on the various aspects of artificial muscles, including EAP, and their applications to bioinspired mechanisms. The Guess Editors are seeking to publish an issue that provides a snapshot of the current state of the field. Contributions are sought to cover the fundamental aspects of artificial muscles, ionic and field activated EAP, methods of fabrication, databases, sensors, applications and others.

Topical Review

What is an artificial muscle? A comparison of soft actuators to biological muscles

Diego R Higueras-Ruiz et al 2022 Bioinspir. Biomim. 17 011001

Papers

Open access
Modelling dielectric elastomer circuit networks for soft biomimetics

Luca Ciarella et al 2021 Bioinspir. Biomim. 16 065006

Novel polyrotaxane cross-linkers as a versatile platform for slide-ring silicone

Jakob-Anhtu Tran et al 2021 Bioinspir. Biomim. 16 025002

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