The first arm-wrestling match against a human (a 17 year-old female high school student)
was held on 7 March 2005 as part of the EAP-in-Action session of SPIE’s
EAPAD conference. Three robotic arms participated in the contest and the girl
won against all these arms. Subsequent contests are now focusing on measuring
the performance of the robotic arms compared to the student performance that
was recorded in the 2006 contest. In a future conference, once advances in
developing such arms reach a sufficiently high level, a professional wrestler will
be invited for the next human/machine wrestling match. This issue of the journal
is dedicated to publishing recent research advances in the field of EAPs and is the
first such dedicated issue ever to be published. The included papers cover the
whole spectrum of elements considered critical to the development of the EAP
technology infrastructure.