Update: Robot arm loses to human (here).
Six years ago, Dr. Yoseph Bar-Cohen, a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) issued a unique challenge: build a robotic arm using artificial muscles that could arm wrestle a human. The results of that challenge will be determined next week, when three such robotic arms will "step into the ring" to compete against a 17- year-old high school student. The ultimate goal is to win against the strongest human on Earth.
An artist's concept of electroactive polymers (Courtesy: NASA)
The three artificial arms and their teams come from around the world. Researchers from New Mexico and Switzerland built arms made of plastics and polymers. A group of students from Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia will also test their arm invention made of gel fibers and electrochemical cells.
For more information about the competition, visit here.
Six years ago, Dr. Yoseph Bar-Cohen, a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) issued a unique challenge: build a robotic arm using artificial muscles that could arm wrestle a human. The results of that challenge will be determined next week, when three such robotic arms will "step into the ring" to compete against a 17- year-old high school student. The ultimate goal is to win against the strongest human on Earth.
An artist's concept of electroactive polymers (Courtesy: NASA)
The three artificial arms and their teams come from around the world. Researchers from New Mexico and Switzerland built arms made of plastics and polymers. A group of students from Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia will also test their arm invention made of gel fibers and electrochemical cells.
For more information about the competition, visit here.
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4 Comments:
I can see a time when it will be much cheaper, more reliable and cost-efficient to 'build' -- or more precisely, grow -- a bio-mechanical organism in the lab, rather than assemble them out of metal parts and wires in a factory.
It's all good and well creating a robot that can arm wrestle, but what happens if the damn thing pulls a muscle?
A human can rest up a few days and then be as good as new.
Not so a robot.
Now take that same robot and place the thing in a remote, inhospitable environment and what do you get?
The possibility of injury and mission failure.
The likes of the two Mars rovers are about as complicated as remotely controlled vehicles are going to get before damage through usage becomes an overriding design limitation.
Only this past month or so, a fist-sized lump of rock got wedged in between one of the wheels and the housing of one of the rovers.
While not a show-stopper, this underlines the limitations faced.
There's much more to be gained from wetware than there will ever been gained from hardware...
The six million Dollar Man.
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