This paper will first cover a brief summary of the fundamental properties and characteristics of ionic polymeric-conductor composites (IPCCs) as biomimetic sensors, robotic actuators and artificial muscles. It will then address such fundamentals in more details. In particular, it will discuss the manufacturing techniques including a comparison between chemical plating and physical loading of a conductor phase, the electronic and electromechanical characteristics of IPCCs, the phenomenological modeling of the underlying sensing and actuation mechanisms in IPCCs, some preliminary constitutive modeling of such complex electroactive materials, as well as some potential industrial and medical application areas for IPCCs, respectively. It will also briefly discuss the potential of IPCCs in developing distributed biomimetic micro- and nano sensors and actuators. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.