After some trial and error, I got the muscle wire to lift via a resistive heater! I’m working with several ideas right now in terms of integrating the heating element into the muscle wires, but the simplest and most immediate test I could carry out was to simply coil the…

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Background I am starting to experiment with a new type of robotic actuator, called a coiled muscle wire (among a few other terms). Essentially, they are a new class of linear actuator that contracts (or expands, depending on how you make it) when heated. Coiled muscle wires are reported to…

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