DMD has not received a large amount of public awareness and traditional petitions are so common the medium tends to be ignored. We set out to combine the two and get maximum public exposure. Specifically designed for Save Our Sons and the Duchenne Foundation, the petition signing robot arm gave these charities a compelling spokesperson - Jacob Lancaster - and a voice. With the arm signing in his handwriting, Jacob became personally involved in every signature signed.

Users are directed to the website: TheMostPowerfulArm.com where they click a button to sign the petition, leaving their Facebook details on the petition database. The arm receives and converts this data in milliseconds telling the paper roller to feed the paper and sign the user's name. Via a live stream, users can see their name being signed while a camera photographs their signature. Their signature is then published on their Facebook feed enabling them to share it, creating a domino effect and triggering others to sign. A completely automated system, there is no human intervention except for changing the paper and pen every 10,000 signatures. This workflow is facilitated by several applications developed in C#, Java and C++, in addition to tools found in the Canon, Facebook, Arduino, GRBL, RabbitMQ and U-Stream SDKs.

Facebook served as a filtering system ensuring people only signed once, eliminating profanity and verifying information on user profiles. This information was used to validate the petition prior to submission to The Australian House of Representatives.

The Most Powerful Arm campaign has already been extended three times due to popular demand. The arm can be reused across the world in its 'signing' context and reskinned for other applications where a robot can be commanded to perform an action.

Finch controls the technology stack and with Save Our Sons is an investor.

Further development of the arm is underway to make it more user friendly and portable. We are in discussions with U.S. DMD figurehead Jerry Lewis to take the campaign around America.

As a physical manifestation of a digital function, the robot arm provides something that has been largely absent in the digital world - something visually tangible to show for a digital action.

The Most Powerful Arm turned Save Our Sons from a cause with no awareness into national news. The campaign is still live, with over 22,000 signatures to date and the arm running at 99.7% Uptime. It’s been posted on over 300 blogs, covered on primetime television, in almost every national newspaper and had 30,000+ Facebook shares. Website and live stream views sit at over 40,000 with a 78% Facebook CPR. Average time spent on the website is 3m with over 150,000 page views. 73% of All Facebook users gave permission for the Application to post to their wall and 82% of users gave permission for their Basic info, including their email address and phone number to be captured.

Awareness levels have grown exponentially – thousands of people even donated money to Save Our Sons, completely unprompted.