Why aren’t Electro Active Polymers used to create exosuits or prosthetics instead of the traditional electric motors/actuators?

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Why aren’t Electro Active Polymers used to create exosuits or prosthetics instead of the traditional electric motors/actuators?

In: Engineering

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

What are you envisioning your prosthetics will use to move if not motors or actuators? From some brief googling, it appears that EAPs actually *are* being used to create artificial muscles, which would be useful indeed for exosuits and prosthetics.

As for why this isn’t done yet, I suspect that it is because cheaper/more reliable/more efficient/more effective to use traditional electric motors or actuators. They’re just easier, for the moment.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Their actuation force is pretty weak, their have so-so environmental resistance, and I don’t think their max cycle lifetimes is nearly in line with traditional actuators.