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Biomimetic Tendons From Rochu Robotics

Rochu Robotics is using a new biomimetic method to produce uniquely natural movement. The engineering is complex, but the model is nature.

This seems very reminiscent of the description of Martian sham musculature in HG Wells' 1898 classic War of the Worlds:

...n their apparatus singularly little use is made of the fixed pivot or relatively fixed pivot, with circular motions thereabout confined to one plane. Almost all the joints of the machinery present a complicated system of sliding parts moving over small but beautifully curved friction bearings. And while upon this matter of detail, it is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature of the disks in an elastic sheath; these disks become polarised and drawn closely and powerfully together when traversed by a current of electricity. In this way the curious parallelism to animal motions, which was so striking and disturbing to the human beholder, was attained.

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