Arm wrestling robots beaten by a teenaged girl

Whole article here.

Flesh 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.

Rest of the article here.

While they probably ought to be stronger than a teenage girl, there is something to be said for domestic robots that aren't much stronger than humans - they'll be much safer in case of malfunction.

But for the purposes of robots designed to do risky jobs instead of humans, I think they need to beef 'em up.

It'll come in time. That was really only a demonstrator to get people to pony up money and resources because he was able to show a working model.

All of the great sci fi fantasies will be coming to life. Muscle augmentation, battlemechs, powered armor.

skynet, VIKI, etc...

And allow airplane wings that flex to change shape instead of flaps and slots. :yelgreedy

Imagine how thin some things, like wings, if the actuators can be strands of muscle instead of big motors or pumps and rams and such.

xoxoxoBruce wrote:

And allow airplane wings that flex to change shape instead of flaps and slots. :yelgreedy

You mean super futuristic "wing warping" like from the Wright Flyer of 1903? Kick ass!!