A simple artificial muscle will be used on a tiny rover heading to an asteroid in 2002. These robots aren't laden with gears, hydraulics and other expensive, heavy and power-sucking parts. Instead, flexible pieces of plastic contract and relax, contract and relax, just like human muscles, to allow the robot to manipulate its surroundings. This is the future of robotic space explorers. In space, where robots will carry out increasingly complex commands, the cumbersome and expensive electronics required to operate a robot becomes a problem.
Heavy items cost more to launch and power supplies are limited on spacecraft.
To help solve that problem, Bar-Cohen and his team are working on turning plastics into artificial muscles called electroactive polymers or EAPs. When an electrical charge is applied, the plastic responds by bending or lengthening. Four plastic ribbons work together to grasp a rock. So far, Bar-Cohen has made two different types of artificial muscles. The first works to grasp objects.