Highly articulated organisms serve as blueprints for incredibly dexterous mechanisms, but building similarly capable robotic counterparts has been hindered by the difficulties of developing electromechanical actuators with both the high strength and compactness of biological muscle. We develop a stackable electrostatic brake that has comparable specific tension and weight to that of muscles and integrate it into a robotic joint. Compared to electromechanical motors, our brake-equipped joint is four times lighter and one thousand times more power efficient while exerting similar holding torques. Our joint design enables a ten degree-of-freedom robot equipped with only one motor to manipulate multiple objects simultaneously. We also show that the use of brakes allows a two-fingered robot to perform in-hand re-positioning of an object 45% more quickly and with 53% lower positioning error than without brakes. Relative to fully actuated robots, our findings suggest that robots equipped with such electrostatic brakes will have lower weight, volume, and power consumption yet retain the ability to reach arbitrary joint configurations.

翻译：高自由度生物体为构建灵巧机构提供了蓝图，但开发兼具生物肌肉高强度和紧凑性的机电致动器存在困难，这阻碍了同等能力机器人系统的构建。我们开发了一种可堆叠的静电阻滞器，其比强度和重量与肌肉相当，并将其集成到机器人关节中。与机电马达相比，配备该滞阻器的关节重量减轻四倍，功率效率提升千倍，同时保持相近的保持扭矩。我们的关节设计使仅配备单个马达的十自由度机器人能够同时操控多个物体。进一步实验表明，相较于未使用滞阻器的情况，使用滞阻器的双指机器人对物体进行手内重定位的速度提升45%，定位误差降低53%。与全驱动机器人相比，本研究表明配备此类静电阻滞器的机器人将具有更轻的重量、更小的体积和更低的功耗，同时保持实现任意关节构型的能力。