Robot Builder's Bonanza, 4th Edition, 4th Edition

Chapter 25Robot Movement with Shape Memory Alloy

Ametal with a memory? You bet. As early as 1938, scientists observed that certain metal alloys, once bent into odd shapes, returned to their original form when heated. This property was considered little more than a laboratory curiosity, but research into metals with memory took off in 1961, when William Beuhler and his team of researchers at the U.S. Naval Ordnance Laboratory developed a titanium-nickel alloy that repeatedly displayed the memory effect. Beuhler and his cohorts developed the first commercially viable shape memory alloy, or SMA. They called the stuff Nitinol, a fancy-sounding name derived from Nickel Titanium Naval Ordnance Laboratory.

Shape Memory Alloy Comes to Robotics

In 1985, ...