Bio-Hybrid

For people speculating how our beloved world will eventually come to an end: robots killing their inferior human creators and genetically-modified super-intelligent-mutants wiping us all out are two popular hypotheses among others (big asteroid hitting earth)! So when the term “bio-hybrid” came to birth, I am sure the cyborg connotation touched some nerves.

As far as I know, the term bio-hybrid came out of MIT. It is used to refer to robotic limbs hybridized with our human nerve system. By combining tissue engineering, neurotechnology, material science, surgery, and robotics, a new generation of artificial prosthetics were developed to allow control of metals and plastics by brain signals. The earliest reference I found on the Internet is when the Department of Veterans Affairs issued a $7.2 million grant to MIT and Brown University in 2004. Less than 3 years later, some remarkable bio-hybrid prototypes really emerged.

We had a little peak at Dean Kamen's robotic prosthetic arm in March 2007. This robotic arm was commanded by an amputee to perform intricate tasks such as picking up a water bottle and twisting open an ink pen. (Remember the robot arm in Terminator 2, yeah, so that is where we are now.) Professor Hugh Herr also demonstrated his powered ankle in May this year at an MIT conference. The robotic ankle is intelligent enough to coordinate a natural human gait while propelling the stride. How good is it? The new ankle is 20% more efficient than previous prosthetics and “it feels like you are on one of those moving walkways in the airport.” said Herr.

Although Bio-Hyrid was initially only in reference to robotic limbs, I think its definition could probably be expanded to include microchip implants, such as Professor Kevin Warwick's human-computer interaction chip and RFID tags for soldiers and patients.