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Korean Researchers Create Artificial Muscle That Lifts 4,000 Times Its Weight
UNIST's artificial muscle supports 4,000 times its weight and delivers energy output 30 times greater than human muscle, enabling new possibilities in robotics and wearable devices.
- On Oct 14, 2025, Professor Hoon Eui Jeong's UNIST team unveiled a soft artificial muscle that switches stiffness and supports 5 kilograms, roughly 4,000 times its 1.25 gram weight.
- The field's core limitation — a trade-off between stretchability and energy output — has constrained soft artificial muscles, but the team engineered a composite that stiffens under load and softens to contract.
- The device delivers 1,150 kJ/m³ of work density, an actuation strain of 86.4%, and elongation at break of 1274%, with shape fixation over 99%.
- UNIST noted the study was published online on September 7 in Advanced Functional Materials and was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea, enabling advances in soft robotics, wearable devices, and advanced prosthetics.
- The team combined ferromagnetic particles and shape memory polymers to achieve remote control and complex motions, with stiffness about 2,700 times that of traditional materials.
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12 Articles
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Artificial muscle can switch from soft to rigid to support 4,000 times its own weight
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