Bender Gets Made

Feel free to move this; since it's about robotics I wasn't sure where to put it.

Just saw this story and immediately thought of a real-life Bender mouthing off at the barman for running out of booze to power him up.

http://www.newscientist.com/article....ine-news_rss20

In seriousness, while it may be cool have machines work this way, I think it will be a while before robots use this type of power source. However, it does point to a manner of propulsion that more vaguely resembles "natural" systems, whereby the fuel would need to be channeled deep into the synthetic muscle to generate power (the equivalent of blood), and the heat carefully removed via similar channels filled with coolant.

What unusual applications can you think of for such technology?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Yeah, they don't mention the speed at which the things cycle, which is pretty damn important, since they can already produce polymer-based (plastic basically) muscles that can react to an electrical stimulus and contract/expand every 30th of a second. Also consider that methanol needs to be stored somewhere safely, and as far as I know, catalysts aren't amazingly stable or long-lived, although any chemistry boffins here are welcome to enlighten me.

There's nowhere I can't reach.