Move Over Motors, Here Come Mini-Muscles

Feb. 18 -- For years, toy makers have been stuffing tiny bits of technology inside of dolls to make them more lifelike.

At the centennial American International Toy Fair in New York this week, some of the embedded technology is obvious — computer chips to give the plastic doll a simulated voice, for example.

While all of those dolls may be crying for the attention of buyers responsible for stocking the shelves of the nation's toy stores, Playmates Toys thinks its latest doll can capture its audience with a simple ploy: the mere batting of eyelashes.

Its Baby Bright Eyes doll has large simulated eyes that open, move and blink in response to what the child is doing. For example, place a "bottle" in the doll's mouth and the eyes automatically look down at it — just like a real baby would.

Dolls have been motorized before, says Nancy Goldblum, vice president of marketing of girls' toys for Playmates Toys. So what's so different about Baby Bright Eyes' simulated peepers?

"These [dolls] are totally silent," says Goldblum. "The eyes move in a totally smooth, silent, lifelike motion and that's what it's really about."

And to produce those quiet human-like eye movements, Playmates is turning to a "motor" that acts more like a human muscle than a mechanical device crammed with magnets and noisy gears.

Modernizing Micro-Muscles

The mechanical "muscles" are being developed by a 4-year-old startup called NanoMuscle Inc. in Antioch, Calif.

The NanoMuscle devices are smaller than a matchstick but can lift or move objects that weigh up to 200 grams — nearly half a pound. What's more, the imitation muscles use one-fifth the power traditional electromagnetic motors of similar capabilities would need.

The secret behind NanoMuscles is a decades old technology called Shape Memory Alloys.

First developed by the U.S. Navy Ordinance Laboratory in the 1960s, SMA uses materials that change shape when an electrical current is passed through them. Send a tiny charge through SMA wires and they contract, just like a human muscle. Remove the current, and the wires return to their original form.