A motorless artificial limb and its control architecture

In the next generation of robots, there are no motors and construction is from simple everyday materials. One of the stars of this evolution, is a wire which contracts when heated and is known as muscle wire. A simple soda straw provides a strong structure from which segmented limbs can be constructed. A flex sensor is used at the joint to measure the actual bend angle. A microcontroller controls the limb based on input from a higher level controller. The article covers the construction of a limb, characterizes it and presents some control solutions.