Bio-electricity

[kandrathe]

I hope that makes it clearer?

There is work being done in robotics on electro-active polymers to simulate muscles. Or, the latest buzz is on Superelastic Carbon Nanotube Aerogel Muscles.

Once actuated (or put into motion) in a certain direction, these new artificial muscles can elongate 10 times more than natural muscles and at rates 1,000 times higher than a natural muscle. In another direction, when densified, they can generate thirty times the force of a natural muscle having the same cross-sectional area. While natural muscles can contract at about 20 percent per second, the new artificial muscles can contract at about 30,000 percent per second.

These artificial muscles are carbon nanotube aerogel sheets made by a novel solid-state process developed at UT Dallas. Sometimes called frozen smoke, aerogel is a low-density solid-state material derived from a gel in which the liquid component of the gel has been replaced with gas. Aerogels are comprised mostly of air. The starting material is an array of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes manufactured under a chemical heat process. Because of the special arrangement of these nanotube arrays, which are called forests because they look like a bamboo forest, the carbon nanotubes can be pulled into sheets at speeds of up two meters per second. The sheets have such low density that an ounce would cover an acre.

When scientists apply a voltage to the carbon nanotube aerogel sheets, the nanotubes repulse, or push away from one another, which in effect works the muscle. These transparent sheets have strange properties that are important for muscle operation. While having about the density of air, in one direction, they have higher specific strength (strength/density) than a steel plate. When stretched in another direction, they provide rubber-like stretchability, but by a mechanism quite different than for ordinary rubber. Because of their nanoscale and microscale structure, they amplify a percent stretch in the nanotube orientation direction to a percent 15 times larger than the percent they contract laterally.

What we need is to better understand the matrices that determine how stem cell tissues grow, so we can regrow limbs, eyes, nerves or your biomechanical automata. And, knowing that we could design an optimized circulatory system that removed lactic acid, and provided perfect nutrient and oxygen levels.

But, really you are more in the realm of Terminator/Blade Runner type technology. Although, morally, it's nothing that the god of bio-mechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.

P.S. As an afterthought, perhaps other creatures have better structures for the workhorses for which you are looking, like ants for example.

P.S.S. You should look into the functionality of Mitochondria, and Chloroplasts. For plants and animals, it starts there. But... Pete is right. If we can use solar cells with a higher efficiency than cells, that is a better solution. At least while the sun shines. If you use the sun to accumulate biomass which you feed to an organism that produces work, or energy, then it started with the sun again to make the food (or, fuel -- complex hydrocarbons, where hydrogen is bound to CO2 via carbon sequestration). That might be a solution for motive power when the sun is not available. This is why before the widespread use of automobiles we used horses as our work horses. They eat pasture and hay, and some grain, and convert it into motive power, heat and manure 24/7. So, more things to think about would be that a bio-mechanical device is "always on", it will need some system of cellular regeneration, and it produces wastes that need to be filtered out and purged somehow.

P.S.S.S. Aye. A record for afterthoughts... But, it really comes down to hydrogen. The biological and man's history of fuels comes down to energy density, where hydrogen (liquid esp.) is the winner. MIT recently announces a breakthrough in the solar hydrogen storage area.