Lifeboat Foundation

Recently, a research team from Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, proposed a bionic quadruped soft thin-film microrobot actuated by magnetic fields with a mass of only 41 mg, which promises to be applied to stomach examination and treatment. Researchers realized the multimodal locomotion control of the soft microrobot in magnetic fields and the grasping and transportation of micro-objects by the soft microrobot.

The new paper, published in Cyborg and Bionic Systems, details the process of making the microrobot and the magnetization process, presents the mechanism of microrobot’s locomotion and cargo transportation, and demonstrates the microrobot transporting multiple microbeads from different locations to the target position.

Untethered microrobots have received much attention for their potential in biomedical applications and small-scale micromanipulation. “Due to the fact that magnetic fields are harmless to biological cells and tissues, magnetic fields are widely used to actuate microrobots for biomedical applications,” explained study author Tiantian Xu, a professor at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Elon Musk’s company Neuralink has developed a technology that can link human brains to computers, and according to Musk, it is now ready for human testing. This groundbreaking technology has the potential to revolutionize the way we communicate and interact with machines, and could pave the way for new treatments for neurological disorders. With the announcement that Neuralink is ready for human testing, the future of human-computer integration is closer than ever before.

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This is a clip from Technocalyps, a documentary in three parts about the exponential growth of technology and trans-humanism, made by Hans Moravec. The documentary came out in 1998, and then a new version was made in 2006. This is how the film-makers themselves describe what the movie is about:

“The accelerating advances in genetics, brain research, artificial intelligence, bionics and nanotechnology seem to converge to one goal: to overcome human limits and create higher forms of intelligent life and to create transhuman life.”

Continue reading “When will a computer surpass the human brain?” »

Research in animal models has demonstrated that stem-cell derived heart tissues have promising potential for therapeutic applications to treat cardiac disease. But before such therapies are viable and safe for use in humans, scientists must first precisely understand on the cellular and molecular levels which factors are necessary for implanted stem-cell derived heart cells to properly grow and integrate in three dimensions within surrounding tissue.

New findings from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) make it possible for the first time to monitor the functional development and maturation of cardiomyocytes—the cells responsible for regulating the heartbeat through synchronized electrical signals —on the single-cell level using tissue-embedded nanoelectronic devices. The devices—which are flexible, stretchable, and can seamlessly integrate with living cells to create “cyborgs”—are reported in a Science Advances paper.

“These mesh-like nanoelectronics, designed to stretch and move with growing tissue, can continuously capture long-term activity within individual stem-cell derived cardiomyocytes of interest,” says Jia Liu, co-senior author on the paper, who is an assistant professor of bioengineering at SEAS, where he leads a lab dedicated to bioelectronics.

It’s a revolutionary step forward for soft robotics.

A team of scientists from Edinburgh has engineered smart electronic skin that could pave the way for soft, flexible robotic devices with a sense of touch, according to a press release by the institution published last week.

The technology could aid in breakthroughs in soft robotics introducing a range of applications, such as surgical tools, prosthetics, and devices to explore hazardous environments.

Continue reading “New e-skin could allow robots to sense touch and their surroundings” »

The human fingertip is an exquisitely sensitive instrument for perceiving objects in our environment via the sense of touch. A team of Chinese scientists has mimicked the underlying perceptual mechanism to create a bionic finger with an integrated tactile feedback system capable of poking at complex objects to map out details below the surface layer, according to a recent paper published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science.

“We were inspired by human fingers, which have the most sensitive tactile perception that we know of,” said co-author Jianyi Luo of Wuyi University. “For example, when we touch our own bodies with our fingers, we can sense not only the texture of our skin, but also the outline of the bone beneath it. This tactile technology opens up a non-optical way for the nondestructive testing of the human body and flexible electronics.”

According to the authors, previously developed artificial tactile sensors could only recognize and discriminate between external shapes, surface textures, and hardness. But they aren’t capable of sensing subsurface information about those materials. This usually requires optical technologies, such as CT scanning, PET scans, ultrasonic tomography (which scans the exterior of a material to reconstruct an image of its internal structure), or MRIs, for example. But all of these methods also have drawbacks. Similarly, optical profilometry is often used to measure the surface’s profile and finish, but it only works on transparent materials.

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Musk’s company is far from the only group working on brain-computer interfaces, or systems to facilitate direct communication between human brains and external computers. Other researchers have been looking into using BCIs to restore lost senses and control prosthetic limbs, among other applications. While these technologies are still in their infancy, they’ve been around long enough for researchers to increasingly get a sense of how neural implants interact with our minds. As Anna Wexler, an assistant professor of philosophy in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, put it: “Of course it causes changes. The question is what kinds of changes does it cause, and how much do those changes matter?”

Time to replace X-ray machines with bionic fingers.

A team of researchers at Wiyu University (WYU) in China has created a bionic finger that can create 3D maps of the interiors of any object just by poking it gently and repeatedly, according to a press release.

Imagine your son or daughter has an electronic toy train that they love to play with, but then due to some problem, the train stops working, and your kid starts crying… More.

Continue reading “This bionic finger renders 3D images of objects” »