Pneumaticly Powered Artificial Muscle Response

        For this entire semester, I have been working on a Senior Design project, the goal of which is to make improvements on current prosthetic technologies.  My particular part of the project is aimed at building a direct bone integrator that will attach to the intelligent prosthetic, but that is not the point of this entry.  Recently the team that I work with made some incredible strides forward on the design of the intelligent prosthetic; designs that we decided were cool enough to share with the world.
        A little background into this video, the intelligent prosthesis system shown is an actuator that, when stimulated, opens and allows an inflation of the inner balloon.  The inner balloon causes the latex outer coating to stretch which leads to a vertical compression of the entire muscle.  This compression is what will provide our prosthetic leg with enough force to move as a regular ankle joint would move.  The muscle is stimulated by excitation of live calf muscle tissue.  Normally this would be on the leg of an amputee and the electrodes would be placed on remnant calf tissue, but since we didn't have a trans-tibia amputee on staff, we placed the sensors on the calf muscle of a normal leg.  Notice in the video that the muscle contracts at the exact same time that the artificial muscle contracts.  This is so cool.