If
you look at the history of human culture, most of our technology was created
with the purpose of making something easier. But recently we’ve been moving in
a new direction: instead of creating technology that we can use, we’re making
technology that makes it easier for us to use ourselves. There’s something
terrifyingly romantic about the idea of a cyborg—the merging of man and
machine—and these new technologies serve as subtle reminders that we are
nudging our civilization inexorably closer to the brink of a cyborg age.
10
Display-Enhanced Forearm
The
area between a person’s wrist and elbow serves a very important function.
Specifically, it keeps your wrist connected to your elbow. But to Simon
Oberding and his team at Singapore University, that area is nothing more than
wasted space. What Oberding plans to do with the forearms of the future is turn
them into digital displays. He’s developed a prototype that straps onto
the forearm and has four separate screens, each of which shows a
different set of data. For example, one screen can display GPS directions while
another scans YouTube for interesting videos.
At
its core, Oberding’s prototype is just an extended wristwatch. To reach true
cyborg level, you have to dig a little deeper and implant the watch directly under
your skin. A Toronto software company—called AutoDesk—has been
experimenting with implanted user interfaces. They don’t have a specific goal
for the technology yet, but they’ve managed to successfully implant a touch
sensor in the forearm of a cadaver and charge the embedded electronics with a
Bluetooth receiver. They are still working on making the tech commercially
viable.
9
Vibrotactile Gloves
One
of the attractions of becoming a cyborg is the possibility of extra senses.
Humans have five senses (depending on how you divide them up), and most of them
are linked to a specific organ. For example, you see with your eyes. But what
if you had the ability to “see” with your hands when conditions weren’t the
best for vision? Well, ask Anthony Carton and Lucy Dunne of the University of
Minnesota, who are developing technology that will help firefighters navigate
through smoke without needing to actually see.
It’s
called the vibrotactile glove, and it uses a pair of gloves outfitted
with an ultrasonic rangefinder. Inside the glove is a series of vibrating
motors that, when activated by the rangefinder, will map the position of
surrounding obstacles on the back of the wearer’s hand. A firefighter will be
able to hold his hand in front of him and “feel” the position of everything in
the room.
8
Muscle-Propelled Force Feedback
Haptic
technology—or force feedback—is not new. If you’ve played a video game with a
vibrating controller, you’ve experienced haptic technology—the rumble pack
vibrates simultaneous with action in the game, providing a sensation along with
the visual image. In some cases, force feedback is used to make you do
something specific by creating a force that you naturally try to counter. Think
of it like someone pushing you sideways—your body resists and pushes back
towards them in an effort to maintain your balance.
Most
devices that use haptic technology create the force with a vibrating motor, but
there are limits to how small that can get, which means there are limits to
what it can be used for. A team of German researchers threw out the motors
entirely; instead, they use electrical
stimulation on the muscles to force a response. In testing, they had
volunteers play an airplane game on a smart phone while strong gusts of wind
(in the game) periodically knocked the plane off course. As the “winds” hit,
the player’s right arm would jerk up, tilting the game to the left and forcing
them to compensate by using their other arm to tilt the phone back to the right
position.
Video
games aside, muscle-propelled force feedback will eventually be used when
you’re trying to learn something new. So if you’re golfing, electrical impulses
could gently nudge your body into the correct posture for the perfect swing.
7
Brainwave Sensors
We’ve
already discussed the huge strides in reading brainwaves, like one experiment
in which researchers flew a helicopter with brain signals picked up by an EEG sensor.
But
using a different type of brainwave reader—known as functional near-infrared
spectroscopy, or fNIRS—a group of researchers at Tufts University has developed
a device that will not only pick up brainwaves, but actually organizes that
data to tap into personal preferences. In this case, the fNIRS data was linked
to a brain-computer interface that was able to accurately display movie
recommendations. Stranger yet, the more a person used the system, the more
accurate the predictions became, as if it was actually learning about that
person over time.
These
sensors are difficult to use in everyday settings because little things like
head movements can disrupt the signal, but the same team is developing a program that
can effectively filter out this noise. This could lead to a seamless
brain-to-machine connection that will be able to make the perfect decision for
you every time. It could tell you what movie you want to watch, what you want
to eat, or even what kind of car you want to buy.
6
Fully Articulated Prosthetics
Perhaps
the oldest form of cyborg technology is the prosthetic limb. We know that the
ancient Egyptians used
prosthetics, but we’ve come a long way from carving blocks of wood into the
shape of a toe. In fact, we’ve made more progress in that area in the past
decade or so than the rest of history combined. Take the BeBionic myoelectric prosthetic hand, which can move every finger joint
individually via a connection to the skin and muscles in the amputee’s upper
arm. A tiny twitch will orient the hand into a different position based on the
electrical current running through the skin—giving the prosthetic full
articulation that’s almost, but not quite, as realistic as using a real hand.
It
takes a little practice, but eventually you can perform a huge number of tasks
that wouldn’t be possible with a less advanced prosthetic, such as tying your
shoelaces or using a computer mouse.
5
Nano-Fractal Implants
In
2005, neuroscientist Armand R. Tanguay Jr. wowed the world with his bionic eye
that attached to the retina and received images from a digital camera mounted
on a pair of sunglasses. But the future of bionic eyes looks even
stranger—physicist Richard Taylor is developing an “implant” made of
self-assembling fractal-shaped nanomaterial that can mimic eye neurons.
The
biggest problem with cameras is that they don’t provide information in the same
structure that the eye is used to. Retinal neurons are branched, like a fractal
pattern, and a camera sends signals in a straight line. When a camera is
plugged into a blind person’s retina, most of the information is lost in the
gap between machine and living tissue. That’s why nearly every retinal implant
to this point results in a hazy, grainy, black-and-white image—far from the
resolution achieved by the human eye.
Taylor’s
“nanoflowers” would form a more appropriate connection when
implanted in the retina. Since they more closely resemble naturally occurring
neurons, they would be able to mesh almost seamlessly with the still-working
parts of a blind person’s eye, letting the brain receive the full transmission
from a camera.
The
next step is building a camera that can see with the 127-megapixel resolution
of the human eye. At that point, a blind person would have perfect vision.
4
Merging Vehicles And Humans
This
project, dubbed Homunculus,
seems a little silly on the surface. However, it’s also one of the first
experiments of its kind to attempt to merge a human with a vehicle, and the
implications could potentially change the way we communicate with our cars. As
the researchers put it, “We propose the situation that humans and vehicles can
be unified as one unit.”
The
current approach with Homunculus is geared toward pedestrian safety. For
example, an onboard camera tracks the driver’s head movements, while a pair of eyes attached
to the front of the car copies those movements. This allows a pedestrian to see
if the driver is looking at them. Strips of infrared sensors on the sides of
the car connect to two vibrating motors on the driver’s arms, signaling when
something (a small child, for instance) is close to the car.
3
Taste Changing
If
you’ve seen the The Matrix, you might remember when one of the
characters comments about how the machines couldn’t figure out what chicken
tasted like—and that’s why everything tastes like chicken. It’s a throwaway
joke, but if you think about it, how would you break down the elements of
something as abstract as “flavor,” and reproduce them at will?
That’s
the question Hiromi Nakamura and Homei Miyashita have been tackling for the
past two years, and they have successfully managed to change the flavor of food at the flick of a switch with electric
currents. Their goal is to use artificial taste sensation to enhance the
realism of virtual reality simulators. In other words, if you’re using a
virtual reality headset and you go through the motions of eating a piece of
cake, a tiny device attached to your tongue will produce the right type of
current to make you literally taste the cake.
Their
second goal is to develop something like an electric straw, which you can
program to deliver the taste you want—no matter what you’re drinking. It’s not
unrealistic to see that technology evolve into a tongue implant that lets you
choose what you want to taste.
2
Telescopic Vision
“Superpower”
is a term that shouldn’t be thrown around lightly, but that might be the only
way to describe a contact lens that’s being tested at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology. Using a liquid crystal shutter embedded in the contact
lens, a person wearing it would be able to instantly switch between normal
vision and 2.8x magnification, giving them telescopic vision on demand.
And
surprisingly, it works. The contact lens was already tested on a life-size
model of an eye, and the technology was put into a modified pair of 3-D glasses
to test on a real human. The only hurdle the team is facing right now is
putting the liquid crystal shutter onto a softer plastic, like the kind used in
most contact lenses today. In true cyborg fashion, the lens has been dubbed the
“Terminator Lens.”
1
Parasitic Humanoid
The Parasitic Humanoid, developed by a team at Osaka University
in Japan, turns the previously mentioned force feedback into the ultimate tool
for skill transmission. Basically, the device is worn on the head, and sensors
spread out to the different parts of the wearer’s body. As the person goes
through the motions of an activity, the computer learns what the proper
movements should be. Eventually, it’s able to “teach” those motions to someone
else using force feedback.
In this video,
two of the Parasitic Humanoids are being used simultaneously. One is attached
to an expert, and it’s connected to a second parasite on another person. The
second person can feel—as well as see—what the expert is doing and seeing,
allowing them to copy a complex skill without any formal training. As the
system improves, the researchers plan to use a single parasite that’s already
been programmed with the desired skill. In the relatively near future, you
might be able to buy a Parasitic Humanoid, download any skill, and learn it
almost immediately.
Reference:
listverse.com
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