Battleangel

Working towards the ‘Six Million Dollar Man’

The reality of the first truly bionic human (cyborg) is closing fast. While the present generation of implants is crude, it’s amazing how many parts of the human anatomy that can actually be replaced with cybernetic equivalents. Sight, hearing and basic motor functions are not a problem if you have the cash and know the right people it seems.

The article provides a slight update on projects that the tech-savvy surfer will (hopefully) be familiar with. Among other things it brings up the Dobelle Institute of Lisbon where apparently a total of 12(+2?) have now received the “digital video eye” (or whatever I should call it). While this technology uses a direct neural link to the vision centre, other equally promising projects use ocular implants to achieve the same goal. It’s interesting to see this shift in deployment and the two distinct concepts on how to achieve neuroprosthetic systems. I.e. where to implant and/or intercept neural information. Either in the central nervous system or the peripheral nervous system.
It’s too early to crown a winner of course. And different applications will probably require different solutions anyway. It will be interesting to see how and when the two approaches are implemented.
To properly evaluate the technology I would need insight into concealed research, something that I sadly do not have. Remember that there is a lot of money at stake here. The “Dobelle Eye” for example is estimated to cost as much as $75k. And that probably doesn’t even include a profit margin, i.e. more or less just the price tag of the electronics. From a scientific perspective this high stake approach is a bit problematic. Since the Dobelle research as far as I know is privately funded (and I assume the FDA would have a big problem with this if they operated on US soil) the entire process becomes a closed affair. Not that this is a unique situation. Freedom of information and open source is a pipe dream as far as the scientific community is concerned.