The development of novel conducting polymer hydrogel composites has been pursued in the course of this work. It has been found that conducting polymers can be formed electrochemically within hydrogel structures. This enables the dimensions and shape of conducting polymer based structures to be easily modified. The resulting composites retain the properties of the hydrogels and also are electroactive. Preliminary work suggests that these structures show enhanced performance when used as electromolecular or electromechanical actuators.