[Cyborg] fluidic muscles

[Eric Boyd]

Festo's Animal Robots - awesome awesome videos
http://singularityhub.com/2010/11/23/must-see-videos-of-festos-animal-robots

The key technology is their "fluidic muscles", which are amazing. 
Wikipedia calls them

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_artificial_muscles

The idea is simple, elegant even, and I can't believe I've never seen 
one before.  Apparently they are fairly widely deployed in (German) 
industry by Festo.  The wikipedia article talks about some difficulties 
in controlling them, because the fluid system is compressible - this 
introduces lag, compliance issues, and non-linearity.  So I bet most of 
Festo's contribution in this field is in the control systems which make 
these fluidic muscles operate reliably... in the third video you can 
actually see the compliance issues (e.g. when they transfer a weight 
from one artificial arm to the other).

Those gloves he is wearing are pretty neat too, you can see the 
"CyberGlove" name in one shot:

http://www.cyberglovesystems.com/products/cyberglove-ii/overview

CyberGlove is located in San Jose!

Eric