The robot’s skeletal system mirrors human anatomy with articulated joints, artificial ligaments, and a wide range of movement.
Striving to stand out in the competitive humanoid robotics market, Polish-frim Clone Robotics has unveiled its first full-scale humanoid robot, Clone Alpha.
The humanoid integrates synthetic organs and artificial muscles, replicating skeletal, muscular, vascular, and nervous functions.
Clone’s muscular system uses Myofiber, an artificial muscle technology introduced by the firm in 2021, to move its skeleton. It works by attaching muscles to precise points on the bones, just like in real animals.
Clone Robotics is now accepting preorders for the first 279 units of its humanoid robot, Clone Alpha.
Last month, the company revealed its latest innovation: a humanoid torso with human-like movements.
Biomimetic robotics
While companies like Tesla develop bots for household tasks, Clone Robotics focuses on biomimetic robotics. Founded in 2021, it aims to replicate the strength and dexterity of biological beings, tackling the complex challenge of mimicking the human body
The firm started by creating a robotic hand with artificial bones and muscles, designed to mimic human functionality. Its thumb rotates and can even catch a ball with ease. Building on this, the company developed a humanoid torso with lifelike features, including a movable elbow, cervical spine, and realistic shoulder joints.
Rather than designing movements around its robotic structure, Clone first replicated human anatomy and then enabled natural motion using artificial muscles. The result is strikingly realistic—almost uncanny in its resemblance to the human body.
Building on its expertise, Clone Robotics has now developed a humanoid designed to walk naturally. This is achieved through Clone’s move from rigid actuators to soft, water-powered artificial muscles, aiming for more human-like movement.
Advanced artificial muscles
Clone Robotics plans to advance humanoid robotics with its artificial muscle technology, Myofiber. It animates the skeleton by attaching musculotendon units to anatomically precise points on the bones.
These monolithic units eliminate tendon failures and mimic the desirable traits of mammalian skeletal muscles, such as a response time under 50ms, over 30 percent unloaded contraction, and at least 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) of contraction force for a 3-gram muscle fiber.
According to the firm, Myofiber is the only artificial muscle capable of achieving such power, speed, and efficiency.
The Clone’s skeleton includes all 206 bones of the human body, with minor bone fusions, and features fully articulated joints, artificial ligaments, and connective tissues.
With precise ligament and tendon placement, the android achieves 164 degrees of freedom in its upper torso, including the shoulder with 20 degrees of freedom, the spine with 6 degrees per vertebra, and 26 degrees in the hand, wrist, and elbow.
The nervous system allows instantaneous control over the muscles with proprioceptive and visual feedback. The Clone is equipped with 4 depth cameras, 70 inertial sensors for joint-level feedback, and 320 pressure sensors for muscle force feedback. These are linked to microcontrollers that send data to the NVIDIA Jetson Thor GPU running Clone’s Cybernet model.
The Clone’s vascular system is powered by a compact, 500-watt electric pump resembling the human heart, delivering 40 SLPM at 100 psi. Its Aquajet valve technology operates under 1 watt of power, providing efficient hydraulic pressure to the muscles in a miniaturized design.
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Impressive as it may seem on paper, Clone Robotics has yet to demonstrate a fully functional Alpha robot. While components show promise, successfully scaling from prototypes to complete humanoids will be a key test of their biomimetic approach.
