This is not a sci-fi movie – the person walking next to you could be a cyborg
Professor Kevin Warwick from the UK had a Braingate electrode array directly implanted into his nervous system
It sounds like the beginning of a science-fiction novel: scientists grow a living robot finger, that, when given a jolt of electricity, comes to life, bending to lift a ring off a hook. They refine the technology until they can grow an entire human/machine hybrid, which, with its superior strength, pure intelligence and lack of emotions, turns on its creators. From innocent robot digit comes the end of the human race.
But this is not fiction – at least not the robot finger. Scientists at the University of Tokyo have created a small robot from resin “bones” made on a 3D printer and living tissue, which they cultured from muscle precursor cells. When they apply a voltage to the living tissue, the muscle contracts, making the “finger” bend just like a real finger.
The professors behind this important breakthrough in biohybrid robotics say that they were inspired by science fiction.
“If we can combine more of these muscles into a single device, we should be able to reproduce the complex muscular interplay that allow hands, arms, and other parts of the body to function,” says Yuya Morimoto in a press release titled “Cometh the Cyborg”.
But cyborgs (that is, cybernetic organisms which are part man, part machine) are already here and walking among us. Way back in 2002, Professor Kevin Warwick, at that time based at the University of Reading, UK, had a Braingate electrode array directly implanted into his nervous system. The implant transferred signals via the internet, and through this he was able to control a bionic arm. The implanting of a chip in his wife’s arm also resulted in the first direct and purely electronic communication between the nervous systems of two humans.
Warwick, often called the world’s first cyborg, has described enhancing the human body with electronics as the “next evolutionary step” and said that, in a future in which humanity will be competing with intelligent machines, “there is no way I want to stay a mere human”.
Colour-blind artist Neil Harbisson claims to be the world’s first legally recognised cyborg. In 2004, he had an antenna permanently implanted into the back of his skull. The antenna, which loops over his head to his forehead like an errant telephone headpiece, translates the colour spectrum into musical notes that he hears as vibrations inside his head. (Blue, for instance, is middle C.) He also “hears” colours that are invisible to the human eye, such as infrareds and ultraviolets, meaning he has not just replaced a missing sense, but extended it.
The antenna also enables an internet connection, so Harbisson can receive colour sensations from other sensors or satellites. In a performance in 2014, passers-by in Times Square, New York, painted coloured stripes onto a canvas. The sound waves were sent over the internet directly into his brain and he painted the same colour stripes in front of an audience 10 blocks away.
The antenna appears in Harbisson’s passport photo, approved after weeks of discussion with the British passport office, which officially, according to him, confirmed his cyborg status.