Super Beat is a soft pneumatic actuated pump that mimics the contractile muscles of the human heart. The diagram above shows how it works. The plunger of the syringe is retracted, sucking in air to the barrel and deflating the actuator pockets. This creates a vacuum in the pump that pulls water from the inlet container through the inlet valve into the pump. Water is pulled into the pump despite not priming the pump with water beforehand and having air in the line. The plunger is then advanced, pushing air into the pockets of the actuator, inflating them. The inflated pockets displaces the fluid in the chamber analogous to muscle contraction in the heart, pumping fluid out of the pump through the outlet valve into the outlet container. The one-way inlet and outlet valves prevent fluid from moving from the outlet to the inlet, directing flow only from the inlet to the outlet.