... and wins.
Arm wrestling robots beaten by a teenaged girlFlesh and bone triumphed in the first ever man-versus-machine battle of brawn - an arm wrestling contest between robots and humans in California on Monday.
The champion, beating all three robotic arms each in matter of seconds, was a 17-year-old girl called Panna Felsen, a high school student from San Diego, US.
The contest was set up by Yoseph Bar-Cohen at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, California, US, in an attempt to encourage the development of polymer-based artificial muscles. The aim, he says, is to improve on existing actuators - or muscles - currently used in prosthetics and robots.
The actuators in the three competing robotic arms belong to a class of materials known as electroactive polymers (EAP). These are plastics that can change shape when activated either electrically or with chemicals.
The ultimate aim is to have an artificial arm beat the world's strongest person, says Bar-Cohen. But for now he wanted to make the challenge slightly more attainable which is why Panna, a self-confessed wimp, was chosen to represent humanity.
Second to noneDespite her lack of strength, training and technique, she was able to conquer the first arm, developed by Environmental Robots Inc. from Albuquerque, New Mexico, in just 24 seconds. Following this, and a pep talk from an arm wrestling expert, it took her just four seconds to beat the second arm and three seconds for her to win the last match.
Two champion arm wrestlers oversaw the matches to ensure that standard arm wrestling rules were observed. The three robot teams are now trying to work out what went wrong.
Bar-Cohen first came up with the idea for an arm wrestling contest in 1999. But at the time he thought it would take decades before the technology was ready to match humans. This first contest suggests he may have been right.
Quiet and capableNevertheless, the drive to develop EAP artificial muscles is unlikely to be deterred by this setback because of the need to overcome the current limitations with existing actuators and motors.
Electric motors tend to be too weak, while hydraulics and pneumatics are too heavy for use in robotics or prosthetics. EAPs, in comparison are lightweight, quiet and capable of energy densities similar to biological muscles.
The three robot teams, two from the US and one from Switzerland, each used different types of EAPs for their arms. The Virginia Tech group had three sets of chemically activated muscles acting on the shoulder joint, triggered by hydrochloric acid which caused the EAP strands to contract. Unfortunately, as it turned out, it only started to work a few minutes after its match had ended.
The other two teams, one from the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research in Dübendorf, and the other made by Environmental Robotics Inc. used electrically activated polymers.
The contest was held at the Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices Conference in San Diego, California.
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