From the Editor Eap (artificial Muscles) Newsletter General News

FROM THE EDITOR Yoseph Bar-Cohen, JPL [email protected] The last year of the 2 Millennium, 1999, has been marked with important milestones for the field of EAP in terms of communication platforms. I am please to state that as of this year we have established 2 international conferences: SPIE – emphasizing actuators, mechanisms, smart structures and robotics; and MRS – emphasizing materials science aspect of EAP. In addition, we have (a) this WW-EAP Newsletter offering timely report of progress and information exchange among the developers, users and potential sponsors; (b) WW-EAP Webhub, which is a website linking all the worldwide EAP research facilities; (c) WW-EAP Newsgroup, which was established on November 19, 1999 to allow direct e-mail link among the experts. As an emerging field, it is becoming well recognized that current EAP actuators have numerous weaknesses and unknowns. However, EAP materials are offering unique capabilities attributed to their performance similarity to biological muscles, gaining them the name artificial muscles. Considering the potential of these materials, the Editor of this Newsletter posed a challenge to the EAP science and engineering community to develop a robotic hand that is actuated by EAP and able to win against a human in an arm wrestling match (see figure on page 16). WorldWide ElectroActive Polymers