People don't even understand how important materials science is. All they think about is digital/hype technologies.
One obvious example is the development of semiconductors and the subsequent technologies.
This paper looks a lot like a materials hype paper. The mathematics for the design process are interesting, but the material/actuator itself looks pretty poor.
The actuation forces are incredibly low - if i've eyeballed correctly - around 10 micro newtons and it requires a large bulky magnetic field setup, only shown in the supplementary section.
how many cycles can this material handle before failure? Typical "muscle-wire" shape memory alloys fail with only a few million cycles.
I don't think they mention time/use to failure. However the quick information I can get on the material: "...we use a two-step molding process to embed a heterogeneous distribution of ferromagnetic and aluminum microparticles into a silicone rubber". So it might have the same durability as a similar composite material.