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While shows like Black Mirror terrify audiences with macabre stories of advanced technology and diminishing free will, most people find solace in the fact that eye camera inserts and virtual clones of our consciousness are merely fictions written for our entertainment. For juniors Annie Wu and Joelle Bosia, however, many of these shows are not crazy imaginations but creative tools for our technological future. In their course, What is Biomechatronics?, the two expose students to the dazzling world of biomechatronics and the seemingly limitless possibilities that researchers in the field are exploring today, from tentacle arms to neuronal mind control.
A combination of biology (bio), mechanical engineering (mecha), and electronics (tronics), biomechatronics is an incredibly new area of research that combines expertise in medical, engineering and design. With only four labs in the world specializing exclusively in biomechatronics, Wu and Bosia took it upon themselves to bring this new research to Tufts when they realized that nothing similar was offered through their biomedical engineering program.
“Since it’s such a new field, the course is more focused on highlighting different proof of concept studies, things that aren’t necessarily going to become a product but that we can make now,” Bosia said. Throughout the semester, students learn about various prosthetics and how amputation surgeries are done to fit future prosthetics, the ways in which electrodes assist the limbs in neuroprosthetics, and questions of ethics and portrayals of biomechatronics within the media. Though students will not have the equipment to make any biomechatronic projects themselves, by the end of the course, Wu and Bosia will have taught them everything they need to know to create and draft a design for their own prosthetic limbs. “I think it’s not so much having to understand every detail of how this works or what the circuit diagrams are,” Wu shared, “but just to know that these things are existing and it could potentially have a really big impact in the future.”
Though many people think of prosthetics as a wooden leg or a rubber arm, modern prosthetics can encompass anything from stage cosmetics to mechanized exoskeleton suits similar to those of Iron Man. Not all prosthetics are purely utilitarian either, as evidenced by the Alternative Limb Project, which has come out with prosthetics as wacky as green tentacles and Swarovski encrusted limbs. Biomechatronics have even been used to create empathy for older individuals with Genworth's R70i Aging Suit, an exoskeleton intended to make the user feel as though they have aged 40 years, emulating ailments from glaucoma to rheumatoid arthritis.
Recently, the class was visited by Jay Burkholder, general manager of Mobius Bionics whose recent work with DARPA includes an FDA-approved electric-powered prosthetic arm that mimics total hand function, the first of its kind to be operated from the shoulder socket. With over a thousand parts and worth around $100,000 in production, the arm is the result of a decade-long research project intended for returning veterans missing a limb from line of duty.
While such innovations seem perfect for medical quandaries, applications in the workplace and on the battlefield have raised questions as to the ethics of using biomechatronics outside of the medical sphere. Since biomechatronic products are so new, the few regulations on the topic address only baseline standards for commercial use rather than the extent to which people can or should be using these technologies. Factory workers, for example, may be impacted by innovations in biomechatronics, since the use of mechanized exoskeletons could dehumanize the position of workers and lead to increased work hours. However, some questions are less realistic, such as one student’s suggestions of the possibility of raising the dead through the use of electrode-reading headbands that would allow someone to control the nerves in someone else’s body. It is unlikely that zombies will become a reality any time soon, though.
I want students to have an open mind and keep thinking and exploring different areas,” Bosia said, laughingly referencing their class’s extended discussion on zombies. “We hope that they continue to keep a creative mindset and that their brains keep getting weirder.
About the Author
Emma Hodgdon is a senior studying English literature. Apart from reading Gothic fiction, she can be found practicing cello for the Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, or dancing with the university’s ballroom dance team. She spends her free time experimenting with calligraphy, learning to speak Chinese, and caring for her succulents, Verotchka and Geraldine.
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