THE MACHINES
• Robot
It’s common to depict a robot in human form, with arms, legs and a head. In real life, though, robots often take more functional forms in order to fulfill their task, which could range from gathering moon rocks to diffusing bombs.
A robot is fully mechanized, without any organic parts. It is always controlled by an outside source, like a computer or human.
The word robot is derived from the Czech word “robota”, meaning labor. When the word first appeared in Rossum’s Universal Robots, a robot was a manufactured living thing. While this organic side to robots has disappeared, the idea of them being created for labor purposes is still the most popular.
• Android
An android is sometimes considered to be a robot resembling a human. An android is usually independent, not controlled externally.
• Cyborg
A Cyborg is a mix of organic and inorganic (sometimes). As posed in class, most of us could be considered cyborgs because of our reliance on technology.
Traditionally, a cyborg is a human with a robotic implant, like Darth Vader.
THE CYBORG
A cyborg is a cybernetic organism (i.e., an organism that has both artificial and natural systems). The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. D. S. Halacy’s Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman in 1965 featured an introduction which spoke of a “new frontier” that was “not merely space, but more profoundly the relationship between ‘inner space’ to ‘outer space’ -a bridge…between mind and matter.” The cyborg is often seen today merely as an organism that has enhanced abilities due to technology, but this perhaps oversimplifies the category of feedback.
Fictional cyborgs are portrayed as a synthesis of organic and synthetic parts, and frequently pose the question of difference between human and machine as one concerned with morality, free will, and empathy. Fictional cyborgs may be represented as visibly mechanical (e.g. the Cybermen in the Doctor Who franchise or The Borg from Star Trek); or as almost indistinguishable from humans (e.g. the “Human” Cylons from the re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica). The 1970s television series the Six Million Dollar Man featured one of the most famous fictional cyborgs. Cyborgs in fiction often play up a human contempt for over-dependence on technology, particularly when used for war, and when used in ways that seem to threaten free will. Cyborgs are also often portrayed with physical or mental abilities far exceeding a human counterpart (military forms may have inbuilt weapons, among other things).
Real (as opposed to fictional) cyborgs are more frequently people who use cybernetic technology to repair or overcome the physical and mental constraints of their bodies. While cyborgs are commonly thought of as mammals, they can be any kind of organism
PROF. KEVIN WARWICK
Kevin Warwick is Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, England, where he carries out research in artificial intelligence, control, robotics and biomedical engineering. He is also Director of the University KTP Centre, which links the University with Small to Medium Enterprises and raises over £2Million each year in research income for the University.
Kevin was born in Coventry, UK and left school to join British Telecom, at the age of 16. At 22 he took his first degree at Aston University, followed by a PhD and a research post at Imperial College, London. He subsequently held positions at Oxford, Newcastle and Warwick universities before being offered the Chair at Reading, at the age of 33.
He has been awarded higher doctorates (DScs) both by Imperial College and the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. He was presented with The Future of Health technology Award from MIT (USA), was made an Honorary Member of the Academy of Sciences, St.Petersburg and received The IEE Achievement Medal in 2004. In 2000 Kevin presented the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, entitled “The Rise of The Robots”.
Kevin has carried out a series of pioneering experiments involving the neuro-surgical implantation of a device into the median nerves of his left arm in order to link his nervous system directly to a computer in order to assess the latest technology for use with the disabled. He has been successful with the first extra-sensory (ultrasonic) input for a human and with the first purely electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans. His research has been discussed by the US White House Presidential Council on BioEthics, The European Commission FTP and has led to him being widely referenced and featured in academic circles as well as appearing as cover stories in several magazines – e.g. Wired (USA), The Week (India).
His work is now used as material in several advanced Level Physics courses in the UK and in many University courses including Harvard, Stanford, MIT & Tokyo. His implants are on display in the Science Museums in London and Naples. As a result, Kevin regularly gives invited Keynote presentations around the world at top international conferences.
Kevin’s research involves robotics and he is responsible (with Jim Wyatt) for Cybot, a robot exported around the world as part of a magazine “Real Robots” – this has resulted in royalties totalling over £1M for Reading University. Robots designed and constructed by Kevin’s group (Ian Kelly, Ben Hutt) are on permanent interactive display in the Science Museums in London, Birmingham and Linz.
Kevin is currently working closely with Dr Daniela Cerqui, a social and cultural anthropologist to address the main social, ethical, philosophical and anthropological issues related to his research into robotics and cyborgs.
Kevin regularly makes international presentations for the UK Foreign Office and the British Council, e.g.2004/5 India, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Spain, Czech Rep., USA and Hong Kong.
His presentations include The 1998 Robert Boyle Memorial Lecture at Oxford University, The 2000 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, The 2001 Higginson Lecture at Durham University, The 2003 Royal Academy of Engineering/Royal Society of Edinburgh Joint lecture in Edinburgh, The 2003 IEEE (UK) Annual Lecture in London, The 2004 Woolmer Lecture at York University, the Robert Hooke Lecture (Westminster) in 2005, the 2005 Einstein Lecture in Potsdam, Germany and the 2006 IMechE Mechatronics Prestige Lecture in London.
Kevin was a member of the 2001 HEFCE (unit 29) panel on Electrical & Electronic Engineering, is Deputy Chairman for the same panel in the 2007/8 exercise and is a member of the EPSRC Peer College. He has produced over 400 publications on his research including more than 90 refereed journal articles and 25 books. Kevin received the EPSRC Millenium Award (2000) for his schools robot league project and is the youngest ever Fellow of the City and Guilds of London Institute. Kevin’s research has featured in many TV and film documentaries, e.g. in 2004/5 – Inventions that changed the world (BBC2), Future Scope (RAI 1) and in The Making of I Robot (Twentieth Century Fox/Channel 5). He has appeared 3 times on Tomorrow’s World, 5 times in Time magazine, twice in Newsweek and was selected by Channel 4 as one of the Top 6 UK Scientists for their 2001 series “Living Science”. In 2002 he was chosen by the IEE as one of the top 10 UK Electrical Engineers. Kevin also appeared as one of 30 “great minds on the future” in the THES/Oxford University book – Predictions – with J.K.Galbraith, Umberto Eco and James Watson.
Kevin’s research is frequently referred to by other authors – recent examples being in books by Robert Winston, Peter Cochrane, Jeremy Clarkson and Susan Greenfield. Kevin’s research has also been selected by National Geographic International for a 1 hour documentary, entitled “I,Human” to be screened in 2006 – this will be broadcast in 143 countries and translated into 23 different languages.
EXPERIMENTS CONDUCTED AT UNIVERSITY OF READING
PROJECT CYBORG 1
What happens when a man is merged with a computer?
This is the question that Professor Kevin Warwick and his team at the the department of Cybernetics, University of Reading intend to answer with ‘Project Cyborg’.
On Monday 24th August 1998, at 4:00pm, Professor Kevin Warwick underwent an operation to surgically implant a silicon chip transponder in his foream. Dr. George Boulous carried out the operation at Tilehurst Surgery, using local anaesthetic only.
This experiment allowed a computer to monitor Kevin Warwick as he moved through halls and offices of the Department of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, using a unique identifying signal emitted by the implanted chip. He could operate doors, lights, heaters and other computers without lifting a finger.
The chip implant technology has the capability to impact our lives in ways that have been previously thought possible in only sci-fi movies. The implant could carry all sorts of information about a person, from Access and Visa details to your National Insurance number, blood type, medical records etc., with the data being updated where necessary.
The second phase of the experiment Project Cyborg 2.0 got underway in March 2002. This phase will look at how a new implant could send signals back and forth between Warwick’s nervous system and a computer. If this phase succeeds with no complications, a similar chip will be implanted in his wife, Irena. This will allow the investigation of how movement, thought or emotion signals could be transmitted from one person to the other, possibly via the Internet. The question is how much can the brain process and adapt to unfamiliar information coming in through the nerve branches? Will the brain accept the information? Will it try to stop it or be able to cope? Professor Kevin Warwicks answer to these questions is quite simply “We don’t have an idea – yet, but if this experiment has the possiblility to help even one person, it is worth doing just to see what might happen”.
PROJECT CYBORG 2
The next step towards true Cyborgs?
On the 14th of March 2002 a one hundred electrode array was surgically implanted into the median nerve fibres of the left arm of Professor Kevin Warwick. The operation was carried out at Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, by a medical team headed by the neurosurgeons Amjad Shad and Peter teddy. The procedure, which took a little over two hours, involved inserting a guiding tube into a two inch incision made above the wrist, inserting the microelectrode array into this tube and firing it into the median nerve fibres below the elbow joint.
A number of experiments have been carried out using the signals detected by the array, most notably Professor Warwick was able to control an electric wheelchair and an intelligent artificial hand, developed by Dr Peter Kyberd, using this neural interface. In addition to being able to measure the nerve signals transmitted down Professor Wariwck’s left arm, the implant was also able to create artificial sensation by stimluating individual electrodes within the array. This was demonstrated with the aid of Kevin’s wife Irena and a second, less complex implantconnecting to her nervous system.
Another important aspect of the work undertaken as part of this project has been to monitor the effects of the implant on Professor Warwick’s hand functions. This was carried out by Allesio Murgia a research student at the department, using the Southampton Hand Assessment Procedure (SHAP) test. By testing hand functionality during the course of the project the difference between the performance indicators before, during and after the implant was present in Kevin’s arm can be used to give a measure of the risks associated with this and future cyborg experiments.
THE CYBER-MOTH
Electrodes and a control chip are inserted into a moth during its pupal stage. When the moth emerges the electrodes stimulate its muscles to control its flight.
The Pentagon is creating an army of cyber-moths and beetles to spy on their enemies.
They aim to insert micro-systems as the live insects undergo metamorphosis and their organs grow around the chips and wires that make up the remote-control devices. US military science bureau DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) believes they can take advantage of the evolution of insects such as moths in the pupa stage during which the insect is re-built. The programme is called HI-MEMS (Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems).
Project director Dr Amit Lal got the idea after reading Thomas Easton’s 1990 novel Sparrowhawk in which animals enlarged by genetic engineering were fitted with implanted control-systems. DARPA’s goal is to create cyborg insects that can fly at least 100 metres from their controller and land within 5 metres of a target, then stay put until commanded to buzz off again.If the groups keep making strides, the proverbial fly on the wall may literally become a spy.
In a series of video clips shown at a science conference in Tucson, Arizona, and posted online a tobacco hawkmoth with wires connected to its back lifts and lowers one wing, then the other, then both, in response to signals delivered to its flight muscles. As the DARPA researchers ramp up the frequency of the muscle stimulation the moth’s wings beat faster approaching take-off speed.
In another clip, the moth is flying, tethered from above, when electrical impulses applied to muscles on one side or the other cause the moth to yaw left or right. The clips were filmed at the Boyce Thompson Institute in Ithaca, New York, where a team led by Dr David Stern implanted the flexible plastic probes into tobacco hawkmoth pupae seven days before the moths emerged. They found inserting them any earlier meant the tissue was too fluid to seal around the probe, but any later and development was too advanced and the probes damaged the moths’ muscles. A probe is embedded in each set of flight muscles on either side of the moth and a connection protrudes from the moth’s back. This can be hooked up to the tether wires which also deliver control signals and power.
Meanwhile another DARPA-funded group led by Dr Michel Maharbiz at California University implanted electrodes into the brains of adult green June beetles, near brain cells that control flight. When the team delivered pulses of negative voltage to the brain, the beetles’ wing muscles began beating and the bugs took off.
A pulse of positive voltage shut the wings down, stopping flight short, and by rapidly switching between these signals, they controlled the insects’ thrust and lift. Dr Maharbiz’s team found two ways to make tethered beetles turn. In one, they mounted an LED display in front of a beetle’s eyes. Lighting up the left or right portion turned the beetle in the opposite direction.
In a second, more successful, approach they directly stimulated the flight muscles on one side, causing the insect to turn to the other.
Dr Maharbiz’s system uses a battery glued to the outside of the beetle for power, while Dr Stern’s moth-control system relies on power provided through wires plugged into the implant.
But both would stick out like sore thumbs, and that’s before adding the microphones, environmental sensors and transmitters that they would need to be of any use as spies.
The challenge now is to shrink the components to hide as many of them as possible inside the insect. They are also looking to harness power from the insects themselves. How the insects will be guided to a target is yet another unresolved problem.
“There were a bunch of ideas,” said Dr Charles Higgins at the University of Arizona, who was involved in DARPA’s original brainstorming session for the HI-MEMS project. One was to use radio control to guide the moth although that would mean emitting radio signals, which could be detected by the enemy.
A second was to use GPS signals to guide the insect to its goal, and a third was to point the moth in the right direction and send it off with a pre-programmed series of instructions – for example, fly straight for 50 metres, then circle.
“What you want to avoid is some way of detecting that it’s not a plain old insect, or some situation where its signals could be jammed,” said Dr Higgins. Researchers have already developed remote control systems for rats, pigeons and even sharks but these latest projects are the most audacious yet. The motivation is simple – why labour for years to build robots that imitate the ways animals move when you can just plug into living creatures and hijack systems already optimised by millions of years of evolution?
Attempts by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to create cybernetic insects (hybrids of biological and electronic bugs) have yielded ultralow-power radios to control the bugs’ flight and a method of powering those circuits by harvesting energy, according to research that will be reported this week at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC)
Two papers being presented at ISSCC reveal the latest initiatives in the DARPA-sponsored Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) project, which is currently in its third year. The program’s goal is the creation of moths or other insects that have electronic controls implanted inside them, allowing them to be controlled by a remote operator. The animal-machine hybrid will transmit data from mounted sensors, which might include low-grade video and microphones for surveillance or gas sensors for natural-disaster reconnaissance. To get to that end point, HI-MEMS is following three separate tracks: growing MEMS-insect hybrids, developing steering electronics for the insects, and finding ways to harvest energy from the them to power the cybernetics.
Researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, in Ithaca, N.Y.—which is one of the contractors on the HI-MEMS project—presented progress on the first goal at the IEEE MEMS 2009 conference in Italy two weeks ago, describing silicon neural interfaces for gas sensors that were inserted into insects during the pupal phase. At ISSCC, the HI-MEMS projects focused on new chip technology for the second two goals: Researchers led by DARPA contractor MIT will present a low-power ultrawide-band radio, a digital baseband processor, and a piezoelectric energy-harvesting system that scavenges power from vibrations.
The HI-MEMS project was conceived in 2005 by program manager Amit Lal, an electrical engineering professor on leave from Cornell University while he coordinates the four-year DARPA effort. MIT is one of three major contractors, including the University of Michigan and Boyce Thompson. The research also draws on the work of entomologists, electrical engineers, and mechanical engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Arizona, and Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. To be considered successful, the final HI-MEMS cybernetic bug must fly 100 meters from a starting point and then be steered into a controlled landing within 5 meters of a specified end point. On landing, the insect must stay in place.
The electronic and MEMS components of the system must consume little power and be absolutely featherweight. After all, an average hawk moth weighs 2.5 grams; with too much extra weight it would be unable to fly.
Anantha Chandrakasan, an electrical engineering professor at MIT, is a coauthor on each of the ISSCC papers. The first is an ultrawide-band receiver system on chip, a radio that works at extremely low power over a broad swath of spectrum. (Earlier research had created the transmitter.) The device was specifically built for the HI-MEMS project in order to steer the moth. To control the moth’s flight direction, Chandrakasan and MIT graduate student Denis Daly designed a small, lightweight, low-power radio connected to a tungsten 4-electrode neurostimulator. When this radio picks up the right commands, the device stimulates the nervous tissue in the moth’s abdominal nerve cord. The stimulation makes the moth’s abdomen move in a way that alters the direction of its flight. The radio and stimulator are powered by a hearing-aid battery.
The second chip is a low-power digital baseband processor that can very quickly synchronize with wireless signals. That solves a particular problem with wireless communication. ”When you send a piece of data through a wireless link, the receiver takes some time to lock to the transmitter,” Chandrakasan says. ”Our new algorithms can very quickly synchronize, which means that you can turn on the radio, take the piece of data, and then turn the radio back off very quickly. That saves a lot of power.”
A third chip being presented at ISSCC, which Chandrakasan says is unrelated to the radio chips and not funded under HI-MEMS, could nevertheless be used to meet the DARPA project’s goal of finding ways to efficiently harvest energy from the moth. While a cyborg insect would be fairly autonomous and self-fueling, there would be no way to recharge its equipment payload on missions. Batteries are heavy. So the researchers are seeking a method by which the insect’s flight itself generates the electrical energy the payload electronics require. Harvesting ambient vibration energy through piezoelectric means—in which energy is converted between mechanical and electrical forms—could supply between 10 and several hundred microwatts of power.
The research presented at ISSCC addresses a common problem with energy-harvesting circuits: The power consumed by the harvesters’ control circuits reduces the amount of usable electrical power. The solution, a circuit called a bias-flip rectifier, improves the power-extraction capability by ”more than four times,” according to the paper by Chandrakasan and graduate student Yogesh K. Ramdass.
CONTROLLED FLIGHT
The moth can be made flap its wings under computer control.
The HI-MEMS project is not the first attempt at creating cyborg animals. The list is long, including pigeons, beetles, cats, and bees. Perhaps the most famous example is the cyborg rat. In 2004, John Chapin, a professor at the State University of New York Health Science Center, in Brooklyn, demonstrated Rescue Rats. These were lab rats with neural implants that encouraged them to steer through rubble piles with a camera and GPS locator to find people. Using a radio remote control, Chapin stimulated a part of the rats’ brains that mimicked the sensation of being touched on the whiskers. In response, the rats turned in the direction of the sensation. When they turned, Chapin rewarded them with a quick jolt of electricity in the pleasure center of their brains.
Jelle Atema, a biologist at Boston University and at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, was also funded by DARPA in 2005 to research steering sharks with similar neural implants. Atema says that while he applauds the HI-MEMS project for its technical ambition and engineering virtuosity, he is concerned about its ultimate biological feasibility: Electronic control would compete with natural brain processes. He cites some limitations for insects, including a tendency for moths to approach light sources (the proverbial flames) and a powerful sex pheromone response that could override attempts at remote electronic control. ”Pheromones are incredibly powerful,” he says.
In addition, modifying just one moth would be prohibitively time-consuming and expensive, especially in light of the life span of the animal, says Atema.
Even if HI-MEMS never produces a working cyborg moth, Chandrakasan says that the usefulness of these devices is not limited to the specific DARPA project. You can repurpose the chips for assistive technologies and implantable devices. In particular, he says, the energy-harvesting system would be a promising technology for prosthetic arms, which have a similar problem with weight and battery life.
CYBORG PROLIFERATION IN SOCIETY
In medicine
In medicine, there are two important and different types of cyborgs: these are the restorative and the enhanced. Restorative technologies “restore lost function, organs, and limbs”. The key aspect of restorative cyborgization is the repair of broken or missing processes to revert to a healthy or average level of function. There is no enhancement to the original faculties and processes that were lost.
On the contrary, the enhanced cyborg “follows a principle, and it is the principle of optimal performance: maximising output (the information or modifications obtained) and minimising input (the energy expended in the process)”. Thus, the enhanced cyborg intends to exceed normal processes or even gain new functions that were not originally present.
Although prostheses in general supplement lost or damaged body parts with the integration of a mechanical artifice, bionic implants in medicine allow model organs or body parts to mimic the original function more closely. Michael Chorost wrote a memoir of his experience with cochlear implants, or bionic ear, titled “Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human.” Jesse Sullivan became one of the first people to operate a fully robotic limb through a nerve-muscle graft, enabling him a complex range of motions beyond that of previous prosthetics. By 2004, a fully functioning artificial heart was developed. The continued technological development of bionic and nanotechnologies begins to raise the question of enhancement, and of the future possibilities for cyborgs which surpass the original functionality of the biological model. The ethics and desirability of “enhancement prosthetics” have been debated; their proponents include the transhumanist movement, with its belief that new technologies can assist the human race in developing beyond its present, normative limitations such as aging and disease, as well as other, more general incapacities, such as limitations on speed, strength, endurance, and intelligence. Opponents of the concept describe what they believe to be biases which propel the development and acceptance of such technologies; namely, a bias towards functionality and efficiency that may compel assent to a view of human people which de-emphasises as defining characteristics actual manifestations of humanity and personhood, in favour of definition in terms of upgrades, versions, and utility.
One of the more common and accepted forms of temporary modification occurs as a result of prenatal diagnosis technologies. Some modern parents willingly use testing methods such as ultrasounds and amniocentesis to determine the sex or health of the fetus. The discovery of birth defects or other congenital problems by these procedures may lead to neonatal treatment in the form of open fetal surgery or the less invasive fetal intervention.
A brain-computer interface, or BCI, provides a direct path of communication from the brain to an external device, effectively creating a cyborg. Research of Invasive BCIs, which utilize electrodes implanted directly into the grey matter of the brain, has focused on restoring damaged eye sight in the blind and providing functionality to paralysed people, most notably those with severe cases, such as Locked-In syndrome.
Retinal implants are another form of cyborgization in medicine. The theory behind retinal stimulation to restore vision to people suffering from retinitis pigmentosa and vision loss due to aging (conditions in which people have an abnormally low amount of ganglion cells) is that the retinal implant and electrical stimulation would act as a substitute for the missing ganglion cells (cells which connect the eye to the brain).
While work to perfect this technology is still being done, there have already been major advances in the use of electronic stimulation of the retina to allow the eye to sense patterns of light. A specialized camera is worn by the subject (possibly on the side of their glasses frames) the camera converts the image into a pattern of electrical stimulation. A chip located in the user’s eye would then electrically stimulate the retina with this pattern and the image appears to the user. Current prototypes have the camera being powered by a hand sized power supply that could be placed in a pocket or on the waist.
Currently the technology has only been tested on human subject for brief amounts of time and the amount of light picked up by the subject has been minimal. However, if technological advances proceed as planned this technology may be used by thousands of blind people and restore vision to most of them. Robot assisted surgery is another way cyborgs are being integrated into medicine.
In the military
Military organizations’ research has recently focused on the utilization of cyborg animals for inter-species relationships for the purposes of a supposed a tactical advantage. DARPA has announced its interest in developing “cyborg insects” to transmit data from sensors implanted into the insect during the pupal stage. The insect’s motion would be controlled from a MEMS, or Micro-Electro-Mechanical System, and would conceivably surveil an environment and detect explosives or gas. Similarly, DARPA is developing a neural implant to remotely control the movement of sharks. The shark’s unique senses would be exploited to provide data feedback in relation to enemy ship movement and underwater explosives.
In sports
The cyborgization of sports has come to the forefront of the national consciousness in recent years. Through the media, America has been exposed to the subject both with the BALCO scandal and the accusations of blood doping at the Tour de France levied against Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis. But, there is more to the subject; steroids, blood doping, prosthesis, body modification, and maybe in the future, genetic modification are all topics that should be included within cyborgs in sports.
As of now, prosthetic legs and feet are not advanced enough to give the athlete the edge, and people with these prosthetics are allowed to compete, possibly only because they are not actually competitive in the Ironman event among other such -athlons. Prosthesis in track and field, however, is a budding issue. Prosthetic legs and feet may soon be better than their human counterparts. Some prosthetic legs and feet allow for runners to adjust the length of their stride which could potentially improve run times and in time actually allow a runner with prosthetic legs to be the fastest in the world. One model used for replacing a leg lost at the knee has actually improved runners’ marathon times by as much as 30 minutes. The leg is shaped out of a long, flat piece of metal that extends backwards then curves under itself forming a U shape. This functions as a spring, allowing for runners to be propelled forward with by just placing their weight on the limb. This is the only form that allows the wearer to sprint.
In art
The concept of the cyborg is often associated with science fiction. However, many artists have tried to create public awareness of cybernetic organisms; these can range from paintings to installations. Some artists who create such works are Neil Harbisson, Isa Gordon,[citation needed] Motohiko Odani,[citation needed] Nick Lampert,[citation needed] Patricia Piccinini, Jenifer Gonzalez, Simbiotica and Oron Catts, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Steve Mann,[citation needed] Orlan and Stelarc.
Machines are becoming more ubiquitous in the artistic process itself, with computerized drawing pads replacing pen and paper, and drum machines becoming nearly as popular as human drummers. This is perhaps most notable in generative art and music. Composers such as Brian Eno have developed and utilized software which can build entire musical scores from a few basic mathematical parameters.
In popular culture
Cyborgs have become a well-known part of science fiction literature and other media. Examples of fictional biomechanical cyborgs include Robocop, Replicants, Star Trek’s Borg and Star Wars’ Darth Vader. Mechanical models include Cylons, and Terminators.
Reference
http://www.kevinwarwick.com/index.asp
http://wearcam.org/cyborg.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Warwick
http://cyberartsweb.org/cpace/cyborg/cyborgov.html
spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/military-robots/cyborg-moth-gets-a-new-radio
http://www.ieee-ras.org/news/170/Cyborg-Moth-Gets-a-New-Radio.html
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