Cyborg Mobile
Lavonda Busing
Synthetic biology aims to engineer cells that can carry out novel functions. There are essentially two approaches in use, said Cheemeng Tan, associate professor of biomedical engineering at UC Davis and senior author on the paper. One is to take a living bacterial cell and remodel its DNA with new genes that give it new functions. The other is to create an artificial cell from scratch, with a synthetic membrane and biomolecules.
The first approach, an engineered living cell, has great flexibility but is also able to reproduce itself, which may not be desirable. A completely artificial cell cannot reproduce but is less complex and only capable of a limited range of tasks.
Tan and the UC Davis team came up with a third approach. They infused living bacterial cells with the basic units of an artificial polymer. Once inside the cell, polymer was cross-linked into a hydrogel matrix by exposure to ultraviolet light. The cells could maintain their biological activity but could not reproduce.
The group is carrying out further research on how to create and control cyborg cells and on the effects of different matrix materials. They also hope to explore their use in a wide range of applications, from meeting environmental challenges to diagnosing and treating diseases.
Additional co-authors on the paper are: Luis Contreras-Llano, Conary Meyer, Ofelya Baghdasaryan, Shahid Khan, and Aijun Wang, UC Davis Department of Biomedical Engineering; Tanner Henson, UC Davis Department of Surgery; Yu-Han Liu, Chi-Long Lin, Che-Ming J. Hu, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
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We conducted the operation stability test of soft organic solar cell modules with both flat and attached on 3D model (Fig. 3f). Both modules on flat and on 3D model show similar operation stability under the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) of simulated sun-light, displaying the reasonable stability on curved surfaces. The faster degradation of the large area modules than small-area single cell is attributed from leakage current path of the larger effective area28.
In conclusion, we established a design strategy for mounting electronics on insects through systematic evaluation of motion abilities and demonstrated charging and wireless locomotion control on living cyborg insects. Two critical strategies, namely achieving sufficient softness and a structure that ensures segment movement, minimise the reduction in the freedom of the body joints. The ultrathin organic solar cell module confirmed the effectiveness of the strategy by charging the battery on living movable insects. The separated functions of components on both the thorax and abdomen enabled sustained untethered usage of cyborg insects. This strategy is effective for other insects and device components. The approach presented in this study contributes to expand the range of activity and realises diverse functions for the cyborg insects.
A frozen G. portentosa female was placed on a small turntable, and 45 images were captured by rotating the specimen at 8 intervals. The images were imported into photogrammetry software (3DF Zephyr, OPT Technologies) to create a precise 3D model.
S.U., H.S., Ke.F., and T.S. conceived of the main idea. Y.K., S.K., and Ke.F. designed and conducted experiments. Y.K., S.L., and M.T. fabricated the organic solar cell modules. Y.K., S.K. and Ke.F. analysed the data. Ke.F. and Ka.F. calculated the mechanics of a film using an approximation model. Y.K., S.K., Ke.F. T.S. wrote the manuscript. Ke.F. and T.S. supervised the project.
This everyday event that we perform without a thought is an amazing feat that combines our superior ability to smell the cookie and computational prowess to determine the direction to move toward the cookie. Robots that possess similar capabilities are yet to be developed as the basic biological principles that are needed to perform this task are yet to be fully understood.
The ability to study neural responses in behaving insects is essential to understanding the robust solutions that biological systems have developed for several engineering problems. Researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis have long sought to understand locusts and their power of sensing, computing and locomotory capabilities.
While the team already joined forces to create recording instruments and nanomaterials to manipulate neural and behavioral responses, they will continue to improve on those as they develop the bio-hybrid and mobile robotic systems.
At Washington University, the research is underway in a state-of-the-art CyBoR facility that includes the habitat for the locusts, the treadmill, the wind tunnel, specialized microscopes and space for visiting researchers as well as for visitors interested in learning about the insects. WashU students also will be included in the research as well as students from the community through various outreach programs.
Other co-investigators include Alper Bozkurt, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University, who will lead efforts on instrumentation for navigation control; Sawyer Fuller, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Washington, who will lead efforts to build miniaturized robots that incorporate both biological and engineering elements; and Nabil Imam, an assistant professor of computational science and engineering at Georgia Tech, who will lead the development of neuromorphic algorithms and hardware in the bio-hybrid and robotic systems.
We present FaceDisplay, a multi-display mobile virtual reality (VR) head mounted display (HMD), designed to enable non-HMD users to perceive and interact with the virtual world of the HMD user. Mobile VR HMDs offer the ability to immerse oneself wherever and whenever the user wishes to. This enables application scenarios in which users can interact with VR in public places. However, this results in excluding all the people in the surrounding without an HMD to become sole bystanders and onlookers. We propose FaceDisplay, a multi-display mobile VR HMD, allowing by-standers to see inside the immersed users virtual world and enable them to interact via touch. We built a prototype consisting of three additional screens and present interaction techniques and an example application that leverage the FaceDisplay design space.
Harpreet Sareen, Jiefu Zheng, and Pattie Maes. 2019. Cyborg Botany: Augmented Plants as Sensors, Displays and Actuators. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '19). ACM, New York, NY, USA.
Harpreet Sareen and Pattie Maes. 2019. Cyborg Botany: Exploring In-Planta Cybernetic Systems for Interaction. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '19). ACM, New York, NY, USA
The biggest study yet of mobile phone usage has discovered that millions of us believe we can't live without our mobiles - almost double the number of phone addicts reported in a similar study last year.
Researchers found the worst-affected addicts are unable to cope if they are more than six feet away from their phone. They use it as a watch and alarm clock and send dozens of text messages every day.
He said: "We have carried out this study every year for four years and this is a very dramatic rise. We were surprised by how many people couldn't cope without their phone. We also saw, for the first time, a whole generation of young, mobile-literate people who are the phone addicts of the future.
"The people in denial are the ones the phone companies really love. They sign up to the lowest tariff but then go way over the limit and end up paying large amounts to their phone company. Despite this, they just won't admit they are not in control."
"You feel you are never out of touch and it becomes impossible to sit down to do something; we are always making a call or sending a text. The scale of the addiction is only going to get bigger, particularly with children."
A look is taken at the world of mobile robots. An argument is given for robots being not only intelligent but also conscious. Cyborg type robots are considered and the robots presently operating in the Science Museum, London are introduced.
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