This Robotic Muscle Is 1,000 Times Stronger Than Yours

Researchers have developed a new robotic muscle that is 1,000 times stronger than a human's, thanks to a material with a wide range of properties.

Vanadium dioxide has been the belle of the ball in the materials world, prized for its ability to change size, shape and physical identity. Now, material enthusiasts can add muscle power to the list of those extraordinary attributes.

Led by Junqiao Wu, a physicist with joint appointments at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the material-sciences division and University of California, Berkeley’s department of material science and engineering, a team of researchers demonstrated a micro-sized robotic muscle created from vanadium dioxide, according to robotic muscle is 1,000 times more powerful than a human muscle. It can catapult objects 50 times heavier than itself over distances five times its length — all within 60 milliseconds. Read more...