Keynote Presentation Biologically Inspired Intelligent Robotics Using Artificial Muscles

Humans throughout history have always sought to mimic the appearance, mobility, functionality, intelligent operation, and thinking process of biological creatures. This effort have led in recent years to advancements in artificial muscles, artificial intelligence, artificial vision and many other biologically inspired fields. Artificial muscles, which are the moniker for electroactive polymers (EAP), are one of the newest among these technologies. To reach the level of making EAP materials actuators of choice for engineers there are many aspect of the field that need to be brought to established levels towards making robust devices. These aspect are the infrastructure for the field of EAP and they range fi-om comprehensive understanding the mechanism from the chemical and electro-mechanical levels thm effective fabrication and processing the materials as actuators. In 1999, the author posed a challenge to the worldwide research and engineering community to develop a robotic arm that is actuated by artificial muscles to win an arm wrestling match against a human opponent. The presented paper will cover the current state-of-the-art and challenges to making biomimetic robots using artificial muscle