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Alcohol Powered Muscles
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.'"
Or these researchers have been watching just a bit too much Cartoon network.
And that, children, was when Slashdot's ratio of non-Bender-related comments to Bender-related comments began its inexorable slide toward zero.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
I could have told you that alcohol makes you stronger and more confident. Do they really need a scientist to figure that one out?
...Chuck Norris' sweat must be like 198 proof.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
There's a blanket term for this, we're called Irish.
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 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.
I only mod funny =D
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
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