Robocop
Kevin Warwick
For those of you who have not seen Robocop, I am not here to criticize it or even really talk about it. I am going to talk about human cyborgs and what is being done in the scientific community to make this vision come true. So Robocop was a human who was basically mutilated and with the technology of their day, was able to become a super cop who is half human, half machine. But what really is a cyborg? The definition of one is a cybernetic organism or an organism that has both artificial and natural systems. Seems pretty impossible, but not to Kevin Warwick, a British scientist and professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading, UK. He is best known for his studies on direct relations between computer systems and the human nervous system. Warwick’s areas of interest have many ethical implications, some due to his Human enhancement experiments. The most famous piece of research undertaken by Warwick is the set of experiments known as Project Cyborg, in which he had a chip implanted into his arm, with the aim of “becoming a cyborg”.
The first stage of his research began on August 8, 1998. It involved a simple transmitter being implanted beneath Warwick’s skin. The transmitter was used to control doors, lights, heaters, and other computer-controlled devices based on his proximity. Warwick said that the main purpose of his experiment was to test the limits of what the body would accept, and how easy it would be to receive a meaningful signal from the transmitter.
The second stage involved a much more complex neural interface designed and built just for the experiment by Dr. Mark Gasson and his team at the University of Reading. This device was implanted into Warwick on March 14, 2002, and interfaced directly into Warwick’s nervous system. The experiment was successful, and the signal produced was enough that a robot arm developed by Warwick’s colleague, Dr Peter Kyberd, was able to mimic thmove along with the actions of Warwick’s own arm.
By using the device implanted into Warwick’s arm, Warwick’s nervous system was connected onto the internet in Columbia University, New York. From there he was able to control the robot arm in the University of Reading and to obtain feedback from sensors in the finger tips. Another extension to the experiment, in which a simpler device was implanted into Warwick’s wife was also successful, which resulted in the first electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans.
This is just the beggining of much more to come. It is amazing what the human race is capable of making but also amazing what the human race capable of taking away.
