自古以来,自然界就是人类各种技术思想、工程原理及重大发明的源泉。20世纪中期,人们越来越深刻认识到大自然的启发对于开发新材料和新技术的重要性,从而提出仿生学概念并建立仿生学这一学科。随着研究的发展,仿生学已成为自然科学的一个前沿和焦点。进入21世纪以来,随着机器人开发的不断深入以及人们对智能机械系统的强烈需求,作为机器人和智能机械系统驱动关键的人工肌肉已成为仿生领域的研究重点。电活性聚合物驱动器具有应变高、柔软性好、质轻、无噪声等特点,与肌肉有着极为相似的特性,甚至在一些方面的性能已经超过了肌肉,被公认为是最合适的仿肌肉材料,称之为“人工肌肉”。近二十年来,在电活性聚合物驱动材料方面取得的研究进展使得仿生的“人工肌肉”研究得以飞速发展。
Nature always gives us inspiration in all kind of technological ideas, engineering principles and momentous invents. Human realized the importance of enlightenment by Nature in developing new materials and technology more and more in the 20th century and the Bionics has been established. Bionics is a frontier field of sciences now. Muscles are the base of the movement for animals with many kinds of perfect properties. As the development of the robots and the demand of the intelligent mechanical system, artificial muscles come to be the focus of Bionics. Electroactive polymer actuator is lighter, softer, higher strain and quieter, which is the best candidate as biomimetic muscles, and also quite general denominated as Artificial Muscles. The reserach of electroactive polymer actuator in the last twenty years promotes the development of artificial muscles in a very fast speed.