Pneumatic Muscles: for good or for awesome?

[roboticWanderor]

Check these awesome pneumatic actuators out.

Fluidic Muscle is a tensile actuator which mimics natural muscular movement. It consists of a contraction system and appropriate connectors. The contraction system is formed by a pressure-tight length of rubber hose, sheathed in high-strength fibres. The fibres create a rhomboidal pattern with a three-dimensional grid structure. When internal pressure is applied, the hose expands in its peripheral direction, thus creating a tensile force and a contraction motion in the muscle’s longitudinal direction. The usable tensile force is at its maximum at the start of the contraction and then decreases in a virtually linear manner as a function of stroke. An efficient operating range is provided with contractions of up to 15% of the nominal length.
The applications of Fluidic Muscle are
as follows:
– Single-acting actuator
– Pneumatic spring

I wish we could use these things on FIRST robots. They are made by FESTO, which provided some of the pneumatic valves in the kit this year, so I'm not sure if they are legal.

ALSO: check out some of the awesome things they have done with this stuff. Look at the menu items, and be sure to check out the videos!

I just stumbled across a video of "Eric's Arm" and was intrigued, so I decided to share with you guys!