One of the most common reasons for discharge from the U.S. military is musculoskeletal injuries. This has a lot to do with the fact that soldiers often have to walk long distances carrying 100 pounds or more of gear on their backs, which quickly takes a toll on the body. DARPA is designing technology that will reduce the strain on soldiers’ bodies by giving them lightweight suits which will support body tissues and muscles.

The project is known as Warrior Web. Unlike other exoskeleton-type suits that have been envisioned to help make soldiers faster and stronger, Warrior Web is a lightweight suit that can be worn under a uniform. It’s flexible enough to allow the soldier to move normally while augmenting and supporting the natural muscles.

Another of the suit’s functions is to detect any injuries the soldier might suffer while wearing the Warrior Web, then adapt to provide more support to the injured area. The technology could be used outside of the battlefield as well, of course, to support firefighters and police, or even to help injured veterans regain some of their lost mobility.

One of DARPA’s loftier goals for this project is to provide enough supplementary muscle power to soldiers that they can easily run a four-minute mile. The suit should be compatible with approximately 90 percent of wearers, both male and female. Using just 100W of power from a small battery, the entire setup should be light enough that soldiers will hardly realize they are wearing it. The only difference will be that they will be able to move faster, stronger and with less fatigue than they could without the suit.

The post DARPA’s Exoskeleton Can Help Soldiers Run 4-Minute Miles first appeared on Gajitz.

Artificial muscles – materials that act like natural muscles by contracting, expanding, and rotating – have always been plagued with limitations. Super-strong materials were too expensive, while inexpensive materials displayed low efficiency. Now it seems that an effective answer has been right in front of scientists, fishermen, and crafters this whole time: plastic fishing line and sewing thread.

A materials science research group at the University of Texas at Dallas began experimenting with these mundane material, twisting a plastic fiber under high tension until it was unable to twist any further. At that point, the material began to form a tight coil. When the plastic can’t coil any further, the coil is locked into place.

At this point, the coil can be considered an artificial muscle. When heat is applied, the molecules in the plastic coil contract and shorten with a surprising amount of power: more than 100 times that of biological human muscles of the same length and weight. The muscle is said to be more energy dense than jet engines. Moreover, the synthetic muscle is extremely durable and very inexpensive.

The process is simple and the materials are easy enough for anyone to obtain, but don’t dismiss this as merely a future high school science experiment. The applications of the synthetic muscle are varied and plentiful; they could be used in everything from robotics to textiles to ventilation systems. The only problem is that the artificial muscle is, at this point, still inefficient – but researchers are already working on improving this incredible, inexpensive technology.

The post Fishing Line Muscle is 100X Stronger Than Human Muscle first appeared on Gajitz.

We’re getting closer to being a race of cyborgs: scientists have engineered self-healing artificial muscles. A research team at Duke University created the bio-engineered muscle tissue which is 10 times stronger than any previous iterations. And, unlike previous generations of bio-engineered muscles, this artificial muscle is able to heal itself both in the laboratory and in animals.

The researchers damaged the muscle by exposing it to a toxin found in snake venom. They then implanted the muscle inside a mouse and installed a “window” in the mouse’s skin to monitor how the muscle was integrating and changing inside the animal’s body. Biological muscles have cells on reserve, waiting to jump into action when the muscle is damaged. The researchers had to create a similar set of “satellite cells” and then watch to see if they would heal the injured bio-engineered muscle.

The muscle fibers were engineered to produce fluorescent flashes to make it easier for the researchers to gauge the rate of the muscles’ growth and strengthening. As they watched through the glass window on the backs of the mice, they witnessed the muscle tissues repairing themselves much in the same way biological muscles do. Next up for the researchers: working to repair biological muscle injuries and diseases with artificial muscles.

The post Artificial Self-Healing Muscles as Strong as Biological Ones first appeared on Gajitz.