this could be a big life saver if it’s small, cheap and safe enough for doctors offices to have so they can triage patients and quickly refer them to hospital when needed rather than having to book an appointment for a scan. Could even become a standard part of a routine medical check-up to test for signs of aortic aneurysms or similar, that could be a huge life saver.
from what they say i wonder if it’ll be useful tied to a machine able to do near-autonomous endovascular surgery? that could really help reduce surgery wait times and improve a lot of peoples lives.
Assuming it takes off in the US, cost may be a more defining factor than usefulness. There’s a reason MRIs are giant ATMs, unfortunately. This may actually be one of the few times the EU has better accessibility since Germany funded the research.
So, taking the average bicep volume as 1000cm3, this muscle could: exert 1 tonne of force, contact 8% (1.6cm for a 20cm long bicep), and require 400kV and must be above 29 degrees Celcius.
Maybe someone with access to the paper can double check the math and get the conversion efficiency from electrical to mechanical.
I expect there's a good trade-off to be made to lower the force but increase the contraction and lower the voltage. Possibly some kind of ratcheting mechanism with tiny cells could be used to overcome the crazy high voltage requirement.
Mwwaah! NOW we can make battlemechs. While I fear a future of robotic warfare where human losses have disappeared, and thus the incentive to end the war has too, leading to permanent opportunities for military-industrial powers to rake in money forever…
This is too cool not to appreciate at least briefly.
Nextdoor is sort of cheating for this, tbh. Not quite as much as LinkedIn would be, but not far off.
Would be more impressive if it used Twitter or Reddit. Although even then I'd bet that enough people outright post their salary to make it difficult to see how accurate it actually is
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