Cyborgs and other man-machine hybrids have long captured people’s imagination. We’re still far from the technology envisioned in science fiction shows like “The Six Million Dollar Man” and “Robocop,” but researchers have made significant progress in the past two years. Areas like robotic prostheses and brain-machine interfacesseem to be building lots of momentum, and we expect to see some promising milestones in 2012. In particular, exoskeletons are literally strutting out of the lab. This year, Ekso Bionics (formerly Berkeley Bionics) will begin selling its robotic suitfirst to rehab clinics in the United States and Europe, hoping to have a model ready for at-home physical therapy by the middle of 2012 (see photo of a "test pilot," below). At the same time, a DARPA-sponsored project by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pittsburgh has been testing a brain implant that allows patients to control an advance robotic arm with their thoughts alone. Many other groups are also working on technologies that promise to blur the line between humans and machines; it won’t happen overnight, but now the promise is not just science fiction anymore—it’s real.
A version of this article was originally published in the March 2012 issue of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine.
The authors are thankful for the timely and thoughtful feedback from a number of researchers: Raffaello D’Andrea, Tiffany Chen, Matei Ciocarlie, Steve Cousins, Aaron Edsinger, Kaijen Hsiao, Charles C. Kemp, Masaaki Kumagai, Matt Mason, Hai Nguyen, Daniela Rus, Bruno Siciliano, Stefano Stramigioli, Gaurav Sukhatme, Russ Tedrake, Andrea Thomaz, and Holly Yanco.
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