Artificial muscles made of hydrogen can make domestic robots silent.Byline: ANI London, October 21 (ANI): Engineers have found a way to make domestic robots a lot quieter, by building them with artificial muscles that run on hydrogen, instead of noisy compressed-air pumps or electric motors. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. a report in New Scientist, Kwang Kim, a materials engineer at the University of Nevada University of Nevada could refer to either of the universities in the Nevada System of Higher Education:
Any of a class of compounds in which hydrogen is combined with another element. There are three basic types of hydrides: saline, metallic, and covalent. Saline hydrides, such as sodium hydride (NaH) and calcium hydride (CaH2 compounds. Metal hydrides can undergo a process called reversible chemisorption chem·i·sorb also chem·o·sorb tr.v. chem·i·sorbed, chem·i·sorb·ing, chem·i·sorbs To take up and chemically bind (a substance) onto the surface of another substance. , allowing them to store and release extra hydrogen held by weak chemical bonds. It's this property that has led to the motor industry investigating metal hydrides as hydrogen "tanks" for fuel cells. To make a silent artificial muscle, Kim and his colleague Alexandra Vanderhoff first compressed a copper and nickel-based metal hydride powder into peanut-sized pellets. They then secured them in a reactor vessel and pumped in hydrogen to "charge" the pellets with the gas. A heater coil surrounded the vessel, as heat breaks the weak chemical bonds and releases the stored hydrogen. The next step was to connect the vessel to an off-the-shelf artificial muscle, which comprises an inflatable rubber tube surrounded by Kevlar fibre braiding. Two of these placed either side of a robotic joint can mimic the push/pull action of muscles by being alternately inflated and deflated de·flate v. de·flat·ed, de·flat·ing, de·flates v.tr. 1. a. To release contained air or gas from. b. To collapse by releasing contained air or gas. 2. . Turning the heater on and off controls the flow of hydrogen into the rubber tube, causing the muscle to move silently. Even better, the muscle performs as well as those that run on compressed air compressed air, air whose volume has been decreased by the application of pressure. Air is compressed by various devices, including the simple hand pump and the reciprocating, rotary, centrifugal, and axial-flow compressors. systems. Importantly, the gas didn't leak. "The system has biological muscle-like properties for humanoid robots that need high power, large limb strokes - and no noise," said Kim. According to Yoseph Bar-Cohen, an engineer specialising in artificial muscle technology at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California, this is "a novel approach" for controlling artificial muscles. "It is an important contribution and increases the arsenal of potential actuators that may become available in the future," he said. (ANI) Copyright 2009 Asian News International The Asian News International (ANI) agency provides multimedia news to China and 50 bureaus in India. It covers virtually all of South Asia since its foundation and presently claims, on its official website, to be the leading South Asia-wide news agency. (ANI) - All Rights Reserved. Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company |
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