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Next Gen Robo-Bodies: Artimus Robotics and their Artificial Muscle Innovations
Colorado Tech Spotlight: Artimus Robotics
John Himes
August 8, 2023
There’s a reason why “doing the robot” isn’t the gold standard for cool dance moves. The jerky, rigid movements quickly lose their charm, especially compared to the fluidity and agility of someone who can really break it down.
It’s all thanks to the muscles that nature gave us. And Artimus Robotics, a tech company in Boulder, Colorado, is making moves to create something closer to muscles for robots. They’re pioneering a new form of “soft robotics” technology, a type of hardware that, like us, is strong yet squishy.
Today’s robots are smart. Tons of research has gone into giving them bigger and better brains, but they still move like the big hunks of metal they are. Just look at this clip of a robot trying to get out of a car. It takes forever!
Artimus Robotics wants to change that. Today’s clunkers cause workplace injuries, and they’re limited to controlled environments like factory assembly lines. All that heavy metal is dangerous.
Artimus’s artificial muscles, on the other hand, are strong enough to pick up a gallon of milk but gentle enough to carefully grab a raspberry without damaging it. Or as Matt Simon at WIRED put it, Artimus is developing tech for “soft yet strong robots that help you around the house without accidentally terminating you.”
Their research has big implications, and not just for the droids themselves. Artimus believes that their technology can create better prosthetics than anything currently available on the market. This will help disabled and elderly people by replacing or augmenting natural muscles with artificial ones, giving them better mobility and a higher quality of life.
What is a HASEL actuator?
Have you ever felt the electrostatic zap of touching a light switch on a dry winter day? Artimus’s technology relies on this same basic principle—only they’re using it to control the contraction of an artificial muscle.
They’re called HASEL actuators, and HASEL is short for hydraulically amplified self-healing electrostatic. Let’s break that down, starting at the end.
An actuator is a device that creates motion. Actuators range from the motors that power a robotic arm’s joints to the bladder of compressed air in a blood pressure cuff.
HASEL actuators have three basic parts: an insulating liquid, a flexible pouch, and two electrodes. Imagine a plastic bag filled with oil that has flexible plates on either side of it. When we run electricity through the plates, they’re drawn together by an electrostatic field, squeezing the bag and displacing the liquid. But the bag is only so big, so it creates pressure.
It’s like a muscle contraction. There’s less space for the same amount of stuff, and that stuff has to go somewhere, so it pushes outward. Flex a muscle and feel how it goes from soft to hard.
The idea is the same for HASEL actuators: the bag starts soft, but when we squeeze it, there’s less space for all that liquid, and it stiffens. In other words, it exerts a hydraulic force. The pressure created by the stiffening can then be used to move stuff around, just like we use our muscle contractions to move objects.
From there, the engineering involves figuring out how to configure the geometry of the system and how to control the flow of electricity. This gives HASEL actuators the ability to move in different ways and take different shapes. Artimus has developed both contracting and expanding actuators in a variety of configurations, making them a flexible solution that can be tailored to deliver precise movement for specific applications.
Finally, there’s the self-healing bit: this means that the liquid flows back to its previous state when the actuator is at rest.
It’s worth noting that the actuators can sense their state, determine if they’re doing what they’re supposed to do, and fix it. For instance, if we tell it to contract to 75% of its potential and it only goes to 50%, it can figure that out and apply more voltage to reach the desired state. This added intelligence is a big gain, especially for assembly lines with thousands of actuators that need to act in conjunction.
This is only the beginning of the story. If you want to really dig in, you can read this research paper that the Artimus team published in Advanced Materials.
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The path to innovation
Like so many innovations happening here in Colorado, our story begins at the University of Colorado (CU) in Boulder. Eric Acome met Professor Christoph Keplinger while in graduate school and decided to join his lab.
“I remember a video of a simple actuator made from a thin piece of transparent rubber and plastic frame,” recalled Dr. Acome. “When voltage was applied to the rubber, the material changed shape and began to move back and forth while increasing speed until it was moving too fast for the frame rate of the camera. It was like magic.”
Alongside a team of other PhD candidates, Dr. Acome and Dr. Keplinger developed the HASEL actuator and published their results in journals like Science Robotics. Commercial interest soon followed.
Technological progress
Since then, they’ve worked to evolve the technology.
In the beginning, the typical lifetime of their actuators was 10,000 cycles. But now they often get more than 500,000 cycles out of their actuators, with some even capable of performing several million cycles. This longevity has been critical for making the tech commercially viable.
Another avenue of improvement has been encapsulating the actuators so they are safe to touch and interact with. The lifelike sensations of these haptic actuators simulate touch feedback and enable them to “communicate information with low cognitive load.” This is a step beyond the simple vibrations that our devices use today.
They’ve also made progress on the driving electronics, which is where most of the complexity is. The artificial muscle hardware itself is actually fairly straightforward; the difficult part is using a powerful force like high voltage electricity to control it. The original HASEL actuators relied on large, mainframe-esque control boxes, while today’s driving electronics modules are small, portable, and cost-effective.
Finally, there’s the materials engineering component. Both the polymer film and the dielectric liquid inside it have been optimized for performance and durability. For example, if an end user wants to deploy a HASEL actuator in a cold environment, they can take advantage of Artimus’s research into liquids that don’t freeze and continue to flow in cold temperatures while retaining the necessary performance characteristics.
A new perspective on natural muscle
If there’s one thing that the scientists and engineers at Artimus share, it’s a reverence for what already exists in nature.
“I have a lot more respect for the performance and capabilities of natural muscles,” explains Dr. Acome. There’s no actuator that “compares with the capabilities and versatility of natural muscles. Artimus Robotics actuator technology is competitive by some measures, but we’re still not able to fully replicate the well-rounded performance of natural muscles. Doing so would be critical for enabling new robotic systems, especially those that interact with people or bio-inspired robots for use in uncontrolled environments.”
Dr. Keplinger shares this sentiment. In his TED talk, he marvels at the rapidity of the hummingbird’s wings, the strength required to move an elephant, and the adaptability of octopus arms.
“We need a new generation of robot bodies that are inspired by the elegance, efficiency, and soft materials found in nature,” he concludes.
Tapping into Colorado’s tech scene
Artimus Robotics takes full advantage of Colorado’s rich technology ecosystem.
They spun out of a lab at CU Boulder, and the university continues to play an important role in their operations. In addition to the world-class talent coming from both CU Boulder and other strong universities in the area, the Artimus team benefits from continued collaboration with their academic counterparts. The ability to take samples back and forth, for example, is enriching for both sides.
They’ve also partnered with the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden to provide actuator and electronics technology to support their research in capturing ocean wave energy.
Additionally, Dr. Acome points to the Boulder Small Business Development Center as an important resource for connecting with other startups, finding mentors, and sharing knowledge and connections.
“We’re proud to be a Colorado-based company,” says Dr. Acome. “Our technology was developed here in Boulder, and although we’re small, we have manufactured and shipped high tech products across the world. We’ve sold over 1,000 actuators and hope to ship many thousands more from Colorado.”
Artimus Robotics is always looking to connect with others who share their passion for innovation. They invite you to reach out to learn more about their technology and career opportunities at their company.
About the Colorado Tech Spotlight
The Colorado Tech Spotlight highlights local innovations and the stories behind them. The series explores how the Colorado tech ecosystem creates an environment that promotes technological progress.
It is produced by Dynamic Tech Media and written by John Himes.
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