NEW YORK: Scientists say that artificial muscles for robots can be made by covering onions in gold.
The humble vegetable’s skin can stretch and flex like real tissue which previous artificial muscles have been unable to emulate.
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By coating the skin in a film of gold, scientists can then apply an electrical current to it using special equipment to make it expand and contract.
In the tests, scientists took a single layer of skin and washed it, before freeze drying it to remove all water.
It was then treated with a special protein to make it brittle, before the gold was painted on.
The onion’s skin was coated with gold to conduct electricity
By applying the electricity at different voltages at the bottom and top, the onion skin moved like a real muscle.
At the moment, high voltages need to be used which will be a problem if they are to be implemented in robots and other automated tools.
The team behind the discovery, from National Taiwan University, will now look at whether a similar technique using lower voltages is feasible.
Other issues that need to be resolved are making the onion skin more durable and water-resistant.
Artificial muscles have been created before using live muscle tissue, but they have to be kept alive – a problem that using vegetable tissue sidesteps.
