You appear to be using an old web browser that may not properly display our pages. Our sites are built using standards compliant guidelines that require a more recent web browser such as:

Internet Explorer 6+
FireFox 1+
Netscape 6+

E-mail this page

Printer-friendly page

Today's Bionic Man

June 1, 2006. The cyborgs are coming.

Human-machine hybrids, they will carry 100-pound loads over long distances, develop artificial arms, hands and legs, and scan their surroundings with powerful bionic eyes.

But do not worry - the science whizzes who designed them say ordinary humans have nothing to fear.

"Integrating machines with human life is part of the natural progression of technology," says Homayoon Kazerooni, Ph.D., a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Kazerooni was just one of several bionics experts present at the Experimental Biology 2006 meeting recently.

His team astounded the scientific world in 2004 after it introduced BLEEX, a wearable robotics system with its own set of legs. BLEEX tracks the wearer's every movement as it helps him or her carry enormous loads for miles without tiring.

Science Fiction Is Becoming Science Fact

The device, designed right now for industrial or military use, is in the fine-tuning stage at this point, Dr. Kazerooni says

"It's a 'lower-extremity exoskeleton,' " he says. "It looks like another person walking right behind you, with its own sensors and onboard computer. It simply walks behind you and takes the load."

Many Americans over age 40 have vivid memories of the original bionic man, TV's Col. Steve Austin. In those days, making a person "better, stronger, faster" by incorporating machinery into or outside his or her body was the stuff of the future.

But Dr. Kazerooni points out that bionics - using technology to extend the body's potential - actually has a very long history.

"You use glasses, and they help you to see better; you carry a cell phone to communicate with people," he points out. "It was always there. But now, it's becoming more organic, more integrated - we already have artificial hips, remember."

His lab is just one of many across the country doing this kind of work. Also on the panel was William Craelius, Ph.D., the Rutgers University researcher who created Dextra, the first multi-finger artificial hand.

Dextra works on the premise that muscles and nerves at the point of amputation still "remember" the missing hand and work as if it were still there. Dr. Craelius, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Rutgers, points out that much hand movement originates higher up the wrist and arm anyway.

"The assumption is that the brain and residual [arm] muscles are intact," Dr. Craelius says.

Dextra's built-in computer picks up data from sensors lying next to the stump end of the arm and then translates that to simple movements - such as grasping - in the artificial hand.

"There are certain patterns that we associate with different grasps," notes Dr. Craelius.

There are limitations, however, and Dr. Craelius remarks "we're still decades away from reproducing the dexterity of the human hand. But this model can open doors, turn keys, that sort of thing."

Bionic Eye, Wrist Replicate Lost Activity

Daniel Palanker, PhD, the Stanford University physicist whose team designed the optical device, explains that it is intended for people who have lost their retinas, usually through degenerative diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa or age-related macular degeneration.

Those diseases destroy retina's photoreceptors, and the bionic eye seeks to replicate that lost activity.

It consists of a wallet-sized portable computer, a tiny solar-powered battery implanted in the eye, and a light-sensing chip half the size of a grain of rice, also implanted in the eye. The final component is a tiny video camera mounted on virtual-reality style infrared goggles.

When everything is working right, this machinery stimulates cells in the retina to perceive images, just as the now-defunct photoreceptors used to do. Initial trials in rats suggest a bionic eye is feasible, and the researchers are hoping someday to achieve 20/80 vision capability - enough to read large print and recognize faces.

Other innovations covered by the panel include an artificial wrist that has proved to be of benefit for persons disabled by arthritis, and super-accurate computer simulations of real-life human movement - essential to the development of new prosthetics.

Dr. Kazerooni says his lab is currently fine-tuning the BLEEX exoskeleton and plans to roll out their final version soon, for use by healthy individuals.

"But we're also looking for partners - engineers, physicians, scientists - to make this device available for people who have a limited ability to walk," he says. "That's our next step - to design these for people like post-stroke patients, or even people with short-term disability, such as a broken leg. If we get the right resources, it won't take more than three years to create such a device."

So, forget The Terminator - bionics is nothing to be scared of, he says. "If you have a firefighter who's carrying major equipment, we want to make his life a little bit easier and help him avoid injuries," states Dr. Kazerooni. "Or a guy working in an auto-assembly line. It's all about making human life better."

Always consult your physician for more information.

Contact Info