Human to Wrestle Robot Arm

SEATTLE, Wash., March 3 -- SPIE (The International Society for Optical Engineering) is set to host a groundbreaking event in robotics history: the first-ever arm-wrestling match between a futuristic robotic arm and a human opponent.

The Armwrestling Match of EAP Robotic Arm against Human (AMERAH) will be held March 7 at 5 p.m. at the Town and Country Resort in San Diego, Calif,, during the Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EPAD) conference at SPIE's Smart Structures and Materials Symposium. The human opponent for the match will be Panna Felsen, a robotics hobbyist and straight-A student from La Costa Canyon High School in Carlsbad, north of San Diego.
The conference will be a milestone for the field of EAP (electroactive polymers), and a robot win will be a milestone accomplishment for biomimetics by demonstrating the ability to emulate human physical capabilities, SPIE said. Participants will be Environmental Robots Inc., the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research and a group of students from Virginia Polytechnic Institute's engineering and mechanics department.

AMERAH's founder, Yoseph Bar-Cohen, a senior research scientist for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by the California Institute of Technology, said he hopes to promote the vast scientific possibilities surrounding the making of robots.

Members of the AMERAH organization committee will judge the competition: Bar-Cohen; Dave Devoto, pioneer and leading representative, US ArmSports (who provided a standard professional arm wrestling table for the competition); Richard Landon, contributor to the book "Biologically Inspired Intelligent Robots" (SPIE Press); Stan Winston Studio, which designed and created the robots and makeup for the movie "Artificial Intelligence: AI"; John D. W. Madden of the University of British Columbia; "robopsychologist" Joanne Pransky; and Brian Thomas, SPIE's senior event manager.

For more information, visit: ndeaa.jpl.nasa.gov/nasa-nde/lommas/eap/EAP-armwrestling.htm