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.

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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.

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It began with Allen Iverson. During the 2000-2001 season, the then-Philadelphia 76ers star wore a sleeve to help with the bursitis developing in his elbow. Shortly thereafter it became a popular fashion statement among fans. Iverson continued to wear the sleeve after his elbow healed, possibly as a placebo against other injuries. One California-based tech company is taking the ‘basketball sleeve’ to the next level.

Based on the athletic principle of muscle memory, Vibrado has created a sleeve with accelerometers located at the hand, forearm and bicep. These sensors trace a player’s movement and compare them to those of a perfect jump shot.

The data produced by the accelerometers is immediately perceptible by lights and sounds that the sleeve gives off. It is also transferred to a computer program for analysis on things like shot arc and free throw technique. Now coaches can tell the exact point at which a player’s jump shot malfunctions.

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Students from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program can get you moving with a new API-based computer program. They have developed a way to control a person’s arm with a keyboard, joystick and even your iPhone. The program is called Open Limbs and is “a platform for controlling human arms over the internet.” Sound creepy? Well, the students are using it for good as an orthopedic system to help people with weak muscles.

Electric pulses shoot to the nerves that are connected to the muscles, causing them to contract. One of the creators, Will Canine, demonstrated the device at the ITP annual spring show by giving his arm up to the internet, in a way. The electrodes were connected to his forearm, and when a nearby model skeleton was moved, his arm mirrored the movement. Now, maybe he can finally master doing the robot with the help of the internet and Open Limbs.

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Depending on how you feel about robots already, this skinless cyclops may be either fascinating or completely horrifying. It is the hope of the bot’s creators that ECCERobot will help move the entire field of robotics in a new, completely non-scary direction.

ECCERobot was built to move just like a human being and to interact with its environment in the way that a human body would. Its design allows it to leave behind the typical mechanical movements and move with the fluidity characteristic of us meatbags. It features the same bones as humans and “muscles” that work very similarly to our own.

Robots have typically functioned more like machines than like people, even the ones meant to look like humans and interact with the human world. This is because they were built using traditional engineering principles, making them potentially dangerous for humans to interact with. ECCERobot is designed with a human-like “softness” that brings it closer to the mechanics of our own bodies.

The bot is so human-like, in fact, that it has to lie down at night to allow the discs in its spine to decompress and return to their original shape…just like ours. It was built in part to allow human engineers and scientists to study how our bodies move and how our brains control them.

It may not be the cuddliest robot you’ve ever seen, but it might just be a stepping stone toward future generations of robots that are nearly indistinguishable from humans. Which, according to those engineers and scientists, is a good thing.

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