Podcast with Yoseph Bar-Cohen on electroactive polymers and artificial muscles

When will robots walk through our doors, cook our meals, and potentially steal our identities? Yoseph Bar-Cohen surveys the frontier of electroactive polymers, biomimetic actuators, and the ethical minefield of human-like machines that could one day be indistinguishable from us.

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Bar-Cohen frames biomimetics as a field that touches everything from clothing inspired by spider silk to drills modeled on gophers. His current work spans bioinspired drilling systems and legged rovers designed to climb steep terrain on other planets, drawing inspiration from mountain goats. He highlights the octopus as a particularly fascinating model organism, noting its ability to squeeze through narrow spaces, camouflage itself, and manipulate objects with soft tentacles. Replicating these capabilities requires materials science breakthroughs that remain years away.

The interview provides a detailed overview of electroactive polymer technology, the closest engineering analog to biological muscle. Bar-Cohen distinguishes two fundamental categories: field-activated (physics-based) polymers that require high voltage but can sustain position without power, and ionic (chemistry-based) polymers that operate at low voltage but suffer from drying and position drift. Current EAP actuators produce forces in the range of 10 kilograms but remain roughly an order of magnitude weaker and slower than biological muscle. His arm-wrestling challenge between human and EAP-driven arms provides an intuitive benchmark for the technology gap.

Bar-Cohen confronts the ethical implications of increasingly human-like robots with striking directness. He envisions scenarios where robotic clones could rob banks with your fingerprints and DNA, where household robots could be hijacked to surveil celebrities, and where military biomimetic birds could cause enemies to kill all real birds. Rather than advocating for bans, he argues that society must develop solutions incrementally, just as it has addressed spam, computer viruses, and automobile safety. The conversation reveals a researcher who sees both the transformative promise and genuine dangers of the coming robot revolution.