‘Robotic Skins’ turn everyday objects into robots
news.yale.edu
news.yale.edu
>So just like you would wrap a robotic skin around an object, you can also wrap it around yourself. One of the demos that we've created is showing the robotic skin on an upper body garment using the sensors in the scan to track posture, and then pulsing actuators when you pass a certain posture threshold, to communicate with the wearer that they should sit back up.
"Living tissue inside a metal endoskeleton" quoting that animated Doctor Who and Terminator crossover called "The ExTerminator".
I've not read the paper yet, but I wonder if the limited movement of the horse is due to the actuators themselves not being able to deform the horse's legs enough?
I just found this 'micro actuator' which looks pretty awesome - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHGLYRUKWeM
Also http://www-robot.mes.titech.ac.jp/research/pamsoftrobo.html looks very impressive
But that's based on the youtube video, which is typical marketing-speak. The paper is much more toned down. It's a cool idea, but I don't like when people make exploratory research look like it's anywhere near application stage.
"Grey goo (also spelled gray goo) is a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all biomass on Earth while building more of themselves,[1][2] a scenario that has been called ecophagy ("eating the environment", more literally "eating the habitation").[3] The original idea assumed machines were designed to have this capability, while popularizations have assumed that machines might somehow gain this capability by accident."
(minor spoilers) That's pretty close to what https://somagame.com/gallery.html is about
As for the actuators: "One of the implementations used pneumatic actuators integrated into an elastomer substrate, whereas the other used coiled shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators integrated onto a fabric substrate."