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Alcohol Powered Muscles

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Sun May 07, 2006 10:02 PM
from the bender-would-approve dept.
Robotics Science
ianchaos writes "In an article on ScienCentral News, Scientists at the University of Texas are using alcohol to power artificial muscles. From the article: 'Usually the only alcohol-powered muscles are the ones in barroom brawls, but one scientist is adding alcohol to artificial muscles to power robots and more.'"
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[+] Science: Super-Strong Synthetic Muscles Developed 191 comments
Too Hot! wrote to mention a BBC article about extremely powerful synthetic muscles. From the article: "The most powerful type, 'shorted fuel cell muscles' convert chemical energy into heat, causing a special shape-memory metal alloy to contract. Turning down the heat allows the muscle to relax. Lab tests showed that these devices had a lifting strength more than 100 times that of normal skeletal muscle. Another kind of muscle being developed by the team converted chemical energy into electrical energy which caused a material made from carbon nanotube electrodes to bend."
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  • Bender had it right! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Winlin (42941) on Sunday May 07 2006, @10:04PM (#15283248)
    Or these researchers have been watching just a bit too much Cartoon network.

  • Great Idea (Score:3, Funny)

    by mikejz84 (771717) on Sunday May 07 2006, @10:05PM (#15283252)
    Finally a fuel for Congressman other than self-righteous indignation.
  • I know at least one 'muscle' that really gets going when there's a lot of alcohol in me...

    /sorry

    • umm, actually that gets inhibited by alcohol...

      <+Vent> if I ever get drunk and can't get it up in bed I'll tell her erection reset by beer

    • Re:Well... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2006, @10:25PM (#15283320)
      no need for the quotation marks. the anal sphincter is actually a muscle.

  • Bender Comments (Score:5, Funny)

    by Council (514577) <rmunroe.gmail@com> on Sunday May 07 2006, @10:08PM (#15283267) Homepage
    And that, children, was when Slashdot's ratio of non-Bender-related comments to Bender-related comments began its inexorable slide toward zero.

  • Did you really need a scientist? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2006, @10:13PM (#15283280)
    I could have told you that alcohol makes you stronger and more confident. Do they really need a scientist to figure that one out?
  • How well can current grain production be scaled up? I mean, if this is gonna be useful, and ethanol cars or ethanol additives to gas, is there enough dormant grain production to take that up? I know that the US has subsidies, so there is dormant production, but is it enough?
    • Obviously the solution is grain production robots.
    • one of the hot research items in alternative energy is genetically modified yeast that can convert cellulose, not just sugar, to alchohol. this way, you only need plant matter such as wood, paper, grass

    • Re:Production Issues? (Score:5, Informative)

      by c_fel (927677) on Monday May 08 2006, @07:12AM (#15284308) Homepage
      Anyway this kind of technology is far far away from production. I had the chance to work with these shape memory alloys (I made a small walking robot for a resaerch project at University) , and what we can read in the article is only the good side of them. In fact there are too many downsides yet :

      1. The contraction speed is very fast, but the decontraction is very slow. This is because it's really easy to heat a metal at a high speed, using eather a heat source or electricity (I used electricity cause it's simpler), but to cool it at the same speed, you would need a cool liquid to flow through the wire. And to use two liquids in alternance means that you must have a hydraulic system for each fiber you want to contract/release.

      2. The article says these "muscles" are strong. This is not the case. At least they could be used to move a tiny robot insect, but if you need to put the hydraulic cooling thing, forget it.

      3. It's really hard to control the exact length of the muscle. Other than "completely long" or "completely short", you have a great time setting exactly the good temperature for a specific length. That is because these muscles have a great hysteresis curve, and two temperatures can give two lengths.

      4. That is enough.

      For those you are interested and french speaking, here's the article I wrote on the robot I made : http://www.polymtl.ca/lrn/chenier/MuscleWires.pdf [polymtl.ca]
  • I'll stick with Diet Pepsi instead of sucking down a Miller to power my muscles. My local gym has a strict no-alcohol policy.
  • Is this related to that great Canadian invention, the Molson Muscle? [whatdoesthatmean.com]

  • The old joke may finally come true.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Malor (3658) on Sunday May 07 2006, @10:20PM (#15283306) Journal
    "Beer, stat! There's too much blood in my alcohol supply!"

  • That must mean... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kitsunewarlock (971818) on Sunday May 07 2006, @10:29PM (#15283331) Journal
    ...Chuck Norris' sweat must be like 198 proof.
  • Wanted: A surgeon who will replace my muscles with the ones mentioned in TFA so I have a legitimate excuse to drink as much as I do.

  • Alcohol-powered muscles (Score:3, Funny)

    by protolith (619345) on Sunday May 07 2006, @10:48PM (#15283376)
    I Got your Alcohol Powered Muscle Right Here
  • "Scientists". At the University of Texas. Powering "artificial" muscles. With alcohol.

    Well, 2 out of 4 isn't bad...

    Ah, the things college students will think of when they've had a bit too much to drink...

    ;-) for the humor impaired...

  • Well known fact (Score:5, Funny)

    by edwardpickman (965122) on Sunday May 07 2006, @10:52PM (#15283381)
    There's a blanket term for this, we're called Irish.

  • University of Texas? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The slashdot submission is wrong; the muscles are being developed at the University of Texas at Dallas. "University of Texas" is our satellite campus in Austin. >:(

  • My artificial muscle dream... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by foniksonik (573572) on Sunday May 07 2006, @10:53PM (#15283386) Homepage Journal
    For many years I've thought of a mechanism for artificial muscles which didn't perfectly mimic either natural muscles, arthropods (hydraulics) or typical electrical motor joints.

    It's based on the idea of muscles, that they exist in perpetual tension, so that to create motion via contraction you don't create more tension on one side of the bone, instead you simply relax the tension on one side and allow the existing tension on the other side to fully exert itself.

    One way of achieving this would be to use thousands of taut wires each attached at one end to the 'bone' via a ligament like structure that would reinforce them... basically you could just braid them all together near the attachment point, and also attached to a motor that would wind or unwind them along it's circumference... thereby tightening or loosening the 'muscle'. This first muscle would be counterbalanced on the opposite side of the bone by a muscle with attachment points inverted, so that for an arm there would be a motor at the elbow and one at shoulder, each controlling one muscle in the arrangement. By rotating each motor only slightly for the degree of motion desired, you could pivot the arm at the shoulder with the strength and force of the movement only limited by the tensile strength of the materials used. By keeping the muscles under tension 'while at rest' there would be a very fast reaction time, similar to any spring based mechanical movement... think hard drive coil... ie: very fast quick twitch response... and at the same time the tension would also provide stiffness and immediate torque for heavy lifting type movements.

    I'm sure other more sophisticated arrangements could be conceived, some using hydraulics or next gen materials like this memory wire... but the point is to use constant tension to produce very controlled, precise, quick, strong movements or long elastic fluid movements as desired... rather than no tension single point of torque/force which leads to poor control, etc.

    my 0.2 on artificial muscles

     
    • that would work very well for systems that are mostly in use, however it would be wasteful to use electricity to pull the cables all the time

      perhapse a system where a computer would decide when to use positive force for motion and when to use negative force for motion.
    • For your concept to work, the "wires" would have to have some sort of reasonable spring constant that would allow you to set up a constant tension of your choice in them. To wind these tightly enough to make them have relatively constant length under a certain level of stress, a system would need a motor/gear system capable of producing high torque. Unfortunately, the system would have limitations. It could never apply a constant force, as the force it produces is related to the displacement (extension)

  • Not really about alcohol... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mattmacf (901678) <mattmacf.optonline@net> on Sunday May 07 2006, @10:53PM (#15283389) Homepage
    From TFA:
    In one experiment, Baughman used alcohol to fuel the movement of these artificial muscles. His team coated the shape memory wire with a chemical called a catalyst. When alcohol was added, it reacted with the oxygen in the air, burning up and releasing heat.

    While the whole alcohol bit makes for a great article, the technology is really in the wire. The only purpose for the alcohol here is in an exothermic reaction that causes the memory wire to heat up and contract. Don't we already have a million ways of doing that that don't prompt the requisite Futurama jokes?

    I also fail to see the promise in this technology. It apparently has its advantages over fluid power (at least enough to warrant researching), but lacks reliability and efficiency? A quick venture to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] tells us "these materials are not currently appropriate for applications such as robotics or artificial muscles, due to energy inefficiency, slow response times, and large hysteresis." AFAICT there are still far too many questions keeping this tech from prime time.

    For instance, how many contractions do you get before the material is exhausted? Is it like a rechargable battery where after a certain number of contractions you get ever diminishing returns from the wire?

    What effect do the chemical reagents have on the physical properties of the wire? Is there a pair of exothermic reagents that will not corrode or degrade the wire over the long term?

    What about the strength of the wire? Can you accurately fine-tune it to exert a controlled force over a given distance? What about releasing the tension in the wire? Would that require another force acting in an opposite direction, or do you just have to wait for the wire to cool off?

    Sounds cool. Just not terribly promising.

    • Re:Not really about alcohol... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I also fail to see the promise in this technology

      Do you have absolutely no imagination? By those standards, flesh and blood-powered muscles are also pretty damn terrible. Flesh muscles are slow, get tired and aren't particularly efficient. Except that the technical problems with the artificial muscle are eventually going to be solvable.

      My point is that because these muscles are similar in operation to human muscles, they're an interesting branch of technology that could one day enable building humanoid robo

      • Re:Not really about alcohol... (Score:4, Informative)

        by penguin-collective (932038) on Monday May 08 2006, @12:17AM (#15283545)
        No, that's not what "hysteresis" means. Hysteresis means that their behavior depends on their immediate history (meaning, one or two contractions earlier). Long term degradation is called something else, depending on the cause and behavior (e.g., "fatigue").
          • As I was saying: term "hysteresis" is not used to describe permanent fatigue or degradation of a material. The Wikipedia article specifically talks about "immediate history", and the new link you posted likewise gives correct examples of hysteresis, none of which involve fatigue or degradation. Shape memory alloys exhibit hysteresis and they also exhibit fatigue; the two are two distinct effects.

            Hope this helps!
  • I do believe there's a Bender joke in there somewhere.

  • Not quite (Score:3, Funny)

    by EZLeeAmused (869996) on Sunday May 07 2006, @11:03PM (#15283408)
    Actually, the artificial muscles in the article were powered by heat; they just used burning alcohol to generate that heat. It didn't say how much waste heat was generated in the process, but you probably wouldn't want a prototype prosthetic strapped to you.

    Now, artificial intelligence powered by alcohol would be ... no wait, that already exists. Pretty much all alcohol-powered intelligence is artificial.

  • Nothing new here! (Score:3, Funny)

    by a gash (891166) on Sunday May 07 2006, @11:22PM (#15283452)
    We already have this technology, it's called Teamsters!
  • Judging by his diction, I suspect that "Slur" Stallone may have discovered this years ago.

  • Seeing as we've exhausted Futurama... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Will2k_is_here (675262) on Sunday May 07 2006, @11:56PM (#15283514) Homepage
    Here's some Simpsons:

    "One for you, one for me. One for you, one for me."
  • (Scene - Local pub, 20 years from now)

    MagicDude: ... so I said that's no cell phone, it's a lobster.
    Bluto: Arrgh, your jokes suck, and I'm taking your woman.
    MagicBabe: Help me MagicDude. Heeeeeeeelllllp
    (Cue Popeye Music)
    (Reach inside shirt, pull out beer can. Squeeze contents into air and drink in one gulp).
    MagicDude: Time to open up a Beowolf Cluster of Pain on your butt.
  • After dowsing those muscles with alcohol, they do really stupid things and get tired really fast.
  • ...17oz lift....16oz lift......... 1oz lift..... 18oz lift.....

    This is a sophisticated weight training programme known
    as stripping :)

    H.

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