The First Muscle Car?

And the source of power for the muscle movement is what, exactly?

The link makes vague reference to "chemical or electrical" stimulus?

Coreless electrical motors are the way to go, then, rather than synthetic muscle. They are available starting at £20GBP.

electric eels

I'm sorry, but as desirable as it is, the flying car will simply never be practical.

Hm. Actually, birds can fly long-distances non-stop by gliding and making use of air currents. They only occasionally need to flap their wings. Their light-weight constructions and advanced low-drag aerodynamics are the key factor, not the fact that they get their power from food+muscles vs other power source+other motor. To different extents, birds fly 'smart', not 'hard' (those who don't are not long range). Also, long-range birds are underpowered relative to their weights, slow, and not particularly crash-worthy (of course, they neither carry passengers nor crash), which makes them a poor choice to model even the most modestly-spec'ed car after.

Regarding the car idea, at least some vehicle-related embodiments of your concept are time-proven and already in use. Bicycles, tricycles, toy cars for kids etc: conversion of muscle energy into wheel rotation.

But why synthetic (how?) muscle tissue etc? This sounds too forward-thinking for our current level of technology to be practical: i.e. 'fluidic muscles' etc rely on pumps for power, which must in turn be powered by conventional rotating motors, so why apply so many energy conversions in the first place (a typical koyote mechanism!*), since rotation is what we're after?

Nice food for thought, but I don't think we've actually 'got something' here. Cheers!

*remember the road-runner cartoon?

Here is a link to some info on plastic muscle. It really is quite interesting stuff. I believe it was first made in a Stamford University for porfit off-shoot a few years ago. It shows some promise for artificial limbs and other applications

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051216185231.htm

In the early '90's, I was working on a project to develop a self-contained, remotely located, intrinsically safe industrial valve control, aimed at the cross-country natural gas pipeline system that was being designed and constructed at the time. We, two of us, were able to get a section of synthetic muscle to play with but my cheap-ass company, with no forward thinking, wasn't interested in developing pneumatic valving using that material. Instead, with the help of Clippard Valves developing their intrinsically safe model for us (their local rep was their retired Vice President), we were able to produce systems, although not self-contained. That was the part of the project I was working on when I had to leave for family reasons in 2000.

I remember applying an extremely small current, a couple of microamps, and frying some of the silicone strips. It would have taken a large amount of the "fibers" to produce the range of movement we were looking for but it would have been fun trying.

Well.... if you want to push some out-of-the-box thinking you shouldn't stop there. Considering you want to use synthetic muscle tissue, why bother converting it to mechanical energy via an engine?

For that matter, why not just genetically breed giant birds and ride them like horses.

Or you could "Jurassic Park" yourself a pterodactyl and strap a cockpit to it's back. If Fred Flinstone can fly like that then why can't we?

(sorry... I'm feeling sarcastic today)

BUT.... I do remember reading about small robots (fit in a teaspoon) using this type of mechanism for movement. Both walking and flight.

Bicycles and tricycles have already been invented; I thought the idea was to come up with something new. Genetically breeding giant birds takes a long time and would be impractical. And we all know what happened with Jurassic Park. But thanks for your suggestions, escpecially the good ones. Propelling a vehicle with muscle tissue is certainly not practical, yet, and I doubt that it will be beating a 426 hemi any time soon. However, there are applications were it may prove to be useful, and I've never heard of anyone converting the linear contractions of synthetic muscle tissue into a rotational power source. There is some merit in doing something for the first time. It doesn't require pumps, or any other power source other than electricity, and apparently requires only microamps to fire. Using an electric eel to power synthetic muscle tissue - now there's an idea I like. Birds do fly smart, but 7,145 miles non-stop still takes a lot of flapping on a very limited power source. And think of the durability. We all get muscle pains now and then, but if you consider the amount of work those muscles perform over the years without repair, it's pretty amazing. And then there's marathon runners, weightlifters, athletes, etc. Can an electric motor deadlift 1,100 pounds using the elctrical output of a plate of spaghetti? Think about the complexity of a combustion engine compared to a simple slab of electroactive polymers. There's very little heat produced. No pollution. No vibration. If a small slab of this stuff could turn a crankshaft at all, how much power could be produced by a 100 square foot chunk of it? Thanks for all the comments - I enjoyed reading them, and I hope you enjoyed thinking about them. Hmmmmm. I wonder what would happen if you hooked up an electric eel to a KERS unit...

if you consider the amount of work those muscles perform over the years without repair

Not to be too overly pedantic... muscle tissue is constantly being repaired in the body. The way we get stronger is to tear and then repair muscle tissue (of course you can take this too far... torn loose is no good)

Having said this, assuming you can work out the kinks you should be able to create an adaptive engine which can transition from fast twitch to slow twitch performance characteristics giving you high speed or high torque depending on the muscle... though I would be more then just a little impressed if you solve the problems with this...

How about giant mutagenic flying squirrels? Plusher then the avian options and less messy 'exhaust'... of course they would need to 'fly' by 'leaps and bounds'... and when you're not flying your squirrel you can put it to use on the hamster wheel generating electricity...

Great brain stimulation, thanks for posting the idea