An artificial muscle that lifts 1,000 times its own weight could pave the way for lifelike robots that make Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator look puny.

Scientists used a 3D printing technique to create the rubber-like synthetic muscle that expands and contracts like its biological counterpart.

Heated by a small electric current, the material was capable of expanding to nine times its normal size. In tests it demonstrated enormous strength, having a strain density - the amount of energy stored in each gram of a stretched elastic body - 15 times greater than natural muscle.

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