Robotic Muscle

In an article today in Gizmag, they demonstrated a robotic muscle developed at the micro scale, that they claimed "is 1000 times more powerful that a human's." It runs on the idea that vanadium dioxide, at a certain temperature, abruptly changes its molecular structure, and that expansion that it undergoes, when combined with many other vanadium dioxide molecules will amount to a very large force. The problem that I found with this is that first of all, all of the tests were conducted at a micro scale, and succeeded only under controlled conditions. next, nature gave humans a certain amount of muscle strength because with more, we would harm ourselves. On a large scale, controlling the energy output is difficult, because there are only two states (muscle expanded and muscle contracted), and there isn't a gradual increase in in power

however, I believe that this advance is still a great thing, because it has better applications outside of the robotics genre. This could be used perhaps as a repairing agent. cracks formed in roads or bridges could be resealed much more easily, by using the tremendous forces to press asphalt in to the roads. It could also be used as a component in nano robots, because current nano robotics lacks the technology to have a muscle that small, and plus, the power boost would increase their efficiency.