High school student Panna Felsen single-handedly - literally - beat three artificial appendages during a competition that pitted humans against robots.

Felsen, a 17-year-old student at La Costa Canyon High School in San Diego, defeated three robot arms in separate arm-wrestling bouts designed to bolster research in the development of artificial muscles.

In this image, Felsen squares off against an opponent built by students from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The entry utilized electrochemical cells and gel fibers, while others submitted by researchers from New Mexico and Switzerland derived their muscular strength from plastics and polymers.

The robot-human arm-wrestling challenge was created by physicist Yoseph Bar-Cohen at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who hopes that one day an artificial-muscle equipped automaton will beat not only a human arm wrestling champion, but the world’s strongest human.

But that day may be a long way off. Felsen trounced her trio of robo-competitors, with none of the artificial arm wrestlers lasted more than 30 seconds against her. The human-robot arm-wrestling smackdown took place in San Diego last week during the Electroactive Polymer and Devices Conference.

-- SPACE.com Staff    

Credit: NASA