Smart textile acts like biological muscle, similar to Spider-Man suit

A team of biomedical engineers in Australia has developed a smart textile that incorporates artificial “muscles”, in hopes that it will revolutionize the future of soft robotics and wearable exoskeletons. The team demonstrated the shape-morphing flexibility of the material with models of a butterfly and flower made from the smart textile, performing complex motions in the lab. Team leader Thanh Nho Do has bigger plans and believes that his team will eventually develop a human smart suit similar to the Iron Man and Spider-Man suits from the Marvel Universe.

The textile, which can lift objects 192 times heavier than it is, can be the start of developing a human smart suit like Iron Man’s.

It can be a wearable exoskeleton, a compression garment for massage therapy, or developed into a shape-shifting robot that can be used in search and rescue for remote areas.