Cyborgs are only a step away !!!

Yo Mamma

The Robot With the Mind of an Eel
Scientists Start to Fuse Tissue and Technology in Machines

CHICAGO -- The cyborg aims for the light and wheels forward. Another light flashes and the cyborg turns. Again and again, like a bull in a ring, the cyborg charges, sometimes veering right, sometimes left, sometimes moving straight ahead, always looking for the light.

The cyborg is no RoboCop, but it is a revolutionary experiment in combining a mechanical device with living tissue. The robot is controlled by an immature lamprey eel brain that was removed, kept alive in a special solution and attached to the hockey-puck-sized robot by wires so it can receive signals from the device's electronic eyes and send commands to move the machine's wheels.

"Until the recent past, people were using biological nervous systems to inspire technology," said physiologist Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi of Northwestern University's Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. "Now we've gone one step beyond, to tap into the nervous system itself."

Mussa-Ivaldi's lamprey larvae are one of a large number of creatures whose supple sensory resources are being put to work in a new generation of animal/machine hybrids.

Mussa-Ivaldi is testing the lamprey brain's ability to control a robot, but the long-term possibilities could be much more spectacular: learning more about how brains work so electronic microprocessors can be developed to help compensate for damage from strokes and other types of nerve trauma

azezil

well it has potential for good or evil, ie for ppl in need of new limbs etc. but it could also be perversed and used to make 'super' soldiers!

hmmmm not sure where to stand on this one!

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"just because ur not paraniod, doesn't mean they're not after u!"

JustHalf

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by azezil:
well it has potential for good or evil, ie for ppl in need of new limbs etc. but it could also be perversed and used to make 'super' soldiers!

hmmmm not sure where to stand on this one</font>

That's a bit of a jump there. Super lampray eel cyborgs!

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It rained in San Francisco Wednesday evening, but the penguins were
still there Thursday morning, smiling broadly.

SHADOW

hmmm
the matrix could be only a few years away so...

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If the bottom falls out of your world, drink Andrews and the world will fall out of your bottom!!
games?

GreenHell

Kewl then we can do all those niffty action scenes I for one can't .... come harvest me oh big bad maachine yokey.

bugler

The big military superpowers have been working on cyborgs for years.I'd imagine on some level since robotics was around,the potential is massive.There is a robot being tested in the US in the field of law enforcement.Basically it can carry and fire a shotgun(thus removing doors or killing people)and has a camera(I suppose several) with which police officers who control the bot can see.Of limited use for now perhaps,as you wouldnt want a robot trundling into a hostage situation,I'd imagine only useful in a shoot out situation.
Abbeylara siege type situation maybe?

WhiteWashMan

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by SHADOW:
hmmm
the matrix could be only a few years away so...


</font>

naaahhhhh.
from puck sized eel brains to worldwide mass illusion. besides, what about those thingies that blow up ships eh?

astrofool

I think military wants generally go beyond what's socially acceptable, there's no stopping this sort of thing, just to hope that it's benefits outweigh gangs of cyborgs running round persecuting and killing all beings different.....