In pursuit of a glorious future in which robots can outrun humans (what could possibly go wrong?), researcher Ryuma Niiyama has unveiled Athlete, a bot that’s intended to sprint.

The bipedal robot’s upper legs are modeled on the human musculoskeletal system, while the lower legs are fashioned from the spring-like blades that amputee runners use (and use so effectively that some have called the blades an unfair advantage).

Erico Guizzo of IEEE Spectrum explains:

Each leg has seven sets of artificial muscles. The sets, each with one to six pneumatic actuators, correspond to muscles in the human body — gluteus maximus, adductor, hamstring, and so forth…. The researchers are now teaching Athlete to run. They programmed the robot to activate its artificial muscles with the same timing and pattern of a person’s muscles during running.

Niiyama described his bot at the IEEE conference on humanoid robots last week, and has published a paper (pdf) on the project in the journal Industrial Robot. The challenge is to get all those artificial muscles working in sequence as the bot bounds across the landscape.

It’s a big challenge. So far, Athlete can take only three to five steps before tumbling to the ground. Still that’s pretty impressive compared to a hopping prototype from 2007 (seen in the video below), which took one great leap for robotics and promptly fell down. Humans, maybe you don’t need to run for your lives just yet.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Brain Surgery Enables Woman to Run 100-Mile Races
80beats: Ostriches Are Endurance Runners, Thanks to the Spring in Their Steps
80beats: Running by the Books: Math for the Marathoner
80beats: No Shoes, No Problem? Barefoot Runners Put Far Less Stress on Their Feet
80beats: Scientist Smackdown: Are a Sprinter’s Prostethic Legs an Unfair Advantage?

Video: Ryuma Niiyama

It’s a disconcerting thought, but somewhere out there lies a cadaver… blinking.

Beyond the fright, however, lies the hope for the suffering–scientists have found a way to make an eyelid blink using electrical charges. It’s a big development that can help people with eyelid paralysis who face the possibility of going blind.

Currently, eyelid paralysis is treated either by transferring a muscle from the leg into the face–a lengthy process that may not be suitable for elderly or sick patients–or suturing a gold weight inside the eye, which helps close the eye with the aid of gravity. But neither solution has many takers. Searching for an alternative, surgeons at the University of California at Davis experimented with artificial muscles with six donated human cadavers.

LiveScience reports:

(more…)