Rael Dornfest of O'Reilly brought to light this interesting new linear actuator. About the size of a paperclip, the Nanomuscle is based on a nano-scale application of shape-memory alloy (SMA). Nanomuscle performance seems to be significantly better than other SMA devices. Strokes of up to 4mm with up to 70 grams of force and cycle times of half a second. Power consumption is claimed to be much less than traditional SMA devices as well.