A soft robotic “muscle” that can lift a thousand times its own weight has been developed by American engineers in a step towards machines that can perform tasks with human-like dexterity.
Over recent years the physical capabilities of robots have lagged some way behind the sophisticated software that drives them.
While some of the creations have mastered manual tricks such as bartending and cooking pizza, the rigid structure of most designs means they struggle to replicate the breadth of skills that even a four-year-old human child can pick up intuitively.
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