/sci/ - Science & Math

equal: ~25 years
better:~30 years

How would robotic limbs be better?

>>1332509
you know when you have to turn something? If we could turn our hands 360º it would be so much better and faster.

>>1332470

It probably wont be clean cut.

It wouldn't surprise me if we had something that was better than the biological version in some ways in 20 years or less.

Although I'd imagine things like full sensation and finger dexterity are further off.

I imagine the military is very interested in this sort of thing. Being able fit a soldier thats had a limb blown off with a prosthetic that has enough functionality to return to active duty would be huge. So there won't be any shortage of R&D funding.

>>1332509
STRONGER. FASTER. BETTER.

>>1332509

Really?

It doesn't take much imagination to think of things that a sufficiently advanced robotic limb could do that a biological one could not.

>>1332470
It's a bit old isn't it. Wasn't there more recently a full arm controlled by brain done by a French team?

And what about the Dean Kamen Arm for DARPA?

> How would robotic limbs be better?

Have you SEEN I, Robot? Will Smith's arm is the fucking HERO of the movie.

>>1332470

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KxjVlaLBmk&playnext_from=TL&videos=6uip_TOTsxU

I don't care what happens as long as I get those to jack off with.

idiots, did nobody pay attention to the terminator?

Dibs on the first robotic penis in a permanent state of orgasm.

basically it boils down to this: the industrial revolution and the digital revolution has changed the way man lives. But evolution has not cached up with our technological advances, and so while our body and brain is still mostly identical to the one of the Romans, our environment has changed a great deal. The human body is not meant to stay at a computer for 8 hours, this inactivity has weakened our bodies. The human body is not meant to survive crashes at 100km/h, or to survive a bomb blast. Technology has shown us that we need to change our body to cater to technology, because our body will take too long to adapt by itself. This is why cyborgs are the future humans.

I think until nanotechnology comes about i would prefer clonning.

>>1332611
fuck yeah cyborgs

>>1332470
it's all about the nerve interface technology, get that reliable and a wide variety of prosthetic options will open up, and from what's currently tested for patients with 'locked in syndrome' we will likely have off the shelf nerve interfaces in 15 years.

I dunno guys..its just not all its cracked up to be

>>1332686

Give it time Anon, give it time.

I want that tatoo

>>1332656

Judging from the video in the OP, nerve interface technology is already quite developed.

I suspect the next few decades will be very interesting. Though I imagine there will be a huge political shitstorm when people start replacing healthy limbs with cybernetic ones.

>>1332733
I imagine a couple new laws will only allow robotic limb transplants to take place in emergencies.

>>1332753

Ever heard of "Voluntary amputees"? Ever heard of the fucking body modders who are all like that, usually with their genitals?

>>1332753

In some countries no doubt, but in others I imagine it'll be a free for all, so long as you can afford it.

You know the religious right will go batshit over this. It'll almost be funny.

>>1332777

Getting something that outperforms a regular arm or whatever is a whole different kettle of fish though, especially if it imparts a significant advantage in the job market.

>You know the religious right will go batshit over this
Nah. Genetic enhancement is where they're likely to go batshit.

>>1332753
Probably less an outright legal thing as a medical ethics quagmire, and docs losing their medical licenses for removing healthy limbs rather than adding the prosthetics, but anyone with money will be able to fly to a medical tourist hospital outside the country and get it done.

like this.

there will be a new kind of racist, against "non pure" robot humans. You didnt hear it here first.

Cybernetic limbs as replacements for those lost in accidents and such have always fascinated me.

We can do it, it's relatively cheap and easy, but as soon as you throw medicine into the fray with it's never ending supply of malpractice lawyers and insurances up the ass, you can expect to pay close to a million bucks for something that can be built for $500 and surgically implanted for $1200.

on the scale of strength: weight: flexibility: durability: fluidity our limbs are at the top of the food chain

>>1332840
>>1332783

I can just imagine Fox news et al.:
"Robotic prosthetics are an abomination and a sin to your godgiven bodies... But boob jobs are gooooooooood!"

That is provided it isn't such an incredibly expensive operation that only the very richest of the rich can get them. Then their opinions will be the exact opposit stating that "If you can't afford to be an improved human you should've been born rich!"

>>1332840
Why? Transhumans would be HARDER BETTER FASTER STRONGER!

Also, in the job market, it would be limited which jobs transhumans could outperform humans. And where they could, they will be outperformed by robots.

>>1332872

This will never get off the ground unless the medical companies can make ridiculous, long term, continuous profits from it.

Transhumanism by way of cybernetics is fine and all, but I'd still rather just upload my mind to a personal computer so I can be a god of my own domain.

>>1332892
hey prosthetics don't heal themselves, regular maintenance will be required, plus upgrades. Would be a cash cow.

>>1332898
Ship of Thesus problem.

If you upload your mind, that'd be a clone of your mind. Not you.

>>1332909
If it's me, then it's me, even if it isn't in my body.

>>1332892
What we need is a branch of science that studies human anatomy, but isn't involved with medicine, and is therefore impervious to "medical" legality. Anyone willing to receive treatment from one of these Anatomologists (fuck yeah I just made that up) would have to accept that they aren't medical doctors, and they're basically giving the scientist the right to experiment with their body.

Given that choice, if I was missing a limb, I'd definitely rather forgo the insurance to give one of these specialists the opportunity to replace my arm with a cybernetic.

>>1332909
If there was a way to link together to exchange information and consolidate the memories of both, I see no problem.

>Implying this technology won't only be available to the rich

>>1332907

Now that you mention it, the oil companies are gonna love them too once they've managed to force combustion engine-driven prosthetics into mainstay, which in turn stimulates the medical economy due to the health problems associated with direct pollution exposure every waking moment!

>>1332922
Imagine if you copied yourself right now though...

I'd be willing to go to work half the time, and in exchange I would go to work the other half.

Basically I'd double my free time.

>>1332932
>combustion engine-driven prosthetics
Oh lol. Suddenly we'll have alchemy and converting humans into philosopher stones.

>>1332916
You start to be two different being as soon as you start to amount different informations.

It might still be you at the exact moment of the transfer, but as soon as he will start gathering data that you do not and that you will be gathering data that it does not, you will start being two different entity.

>>1332943
But they would both be me, there would just be two distinct versions of me.

Which would be awesome.

I could vote twice, and have it not count because I'd vote for opposing parties.

>>1332937
But the two exist in two different worlds: The physical world (possessed by the limitations of such, but has interactions with others), and the virtual world (unlimited in that he can create and deconstruct as a god of his own virtual world, but is wholly isolated, as any 'NPCs' are just his creations).

If the two meet every so often, weekly or daily, to consolidate the information gained by each individual, they will be, for the most part, the same individual living in two different worlds at the same time.

>>1332943
Hence, >>1332922

>>1332916

You might not yourself experience it in this way: If you copy yourself onto a computer, the original you would still be your old self, unless the process is fatal in which case you the real you would be a dead human instead.

>>1332954
>>1332950
That still make two individual, with a common past and sharing information, but still two individual.

The only way to fix this, would be to retransfer the mind of each other regularly to each other to accumulate experience, but you'd restart being two entities as soon as the process is over.

we are closer to captain hook than we are to terminator.

Only in the last 20 years have we invented forearms that can move when the peripheral nervous system outputs a signal through electro endogram.

Only in the last 10 years have we invented a prosthetic shoulder that can move through eeg technology.

Nervous implants are still in their infancy, simply because nerves are so tiny and bundled and everybody seems to grow the nerves in different ways. one persons "move little finger down" nerve will be a few micrometers displaced from another persons.

As far as sensory input is concerned. you might be able to rig up a whisker switch and a shock impulse so somebody can tell if they are touching or not, but they sure as hell haven't yet replicated the ability to "feel" like you can at the tips of your fingers.

You would need to invent a "nano-tech fingertip" in order to sense texture, pressure, temperature, pain, wet/dry etc. very very complicated is neural input.

output, pretty much already done,

>>1332916
Let's say I cloned you, all memories intact.

I send your clone on vacation. Will you know what experiences he has while over there?

No, you won't. It's like having a twin.

>>1332958
This is reminding me of that movie "Moon".

The guy was copied perfectly, he didn't even know he was a clone and like 30+ years had passed.

>>1332973
Unless by "me" you mean the clone, since once I am cloned they are both "me".

Different versions, but still both "me".

"I" would only remember the experience of one, but the other "I" would experience that version as first person as well. From my own perspective.

>>1332973
In answer to your question
>>1332984
I disagree.

More than likely you will give your clone your facebook/msn/hotmail/yahoo/myspace id and your clone or whoever goes on vaccation will make use of the internet cafe facilities whilst there and send information, pictures, maybe a video of what it's like there so the answer is yes both of you will experience being there, only the one who experiences it second hand through the internet will have less of an experience than the one who actually goes there.

>>1332970
Okay, forgive me if you take offense to this for whatever reason, but what I was thinking was along the lines of such in the story of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, where a certain character has the ability to connect with the future version of herself at all moments in that timeline by way of downloading the memories of all her selves in that timeline. As such, the character, at the moment of first connection, had the full memories of everything up to her last moments of destruction, whenever that would be.

It would essentially be one person with the memories of everything that would happen.

Now, ignoring the impossibilities of immediate cross-time communication, and to put a human perspective on that, it would be a very boring life as you know everything that has, can, and ever possibly would happen to you as if it already happened.

However, if the 'you' you connect with is feeding you memories of you living in another world, as a Creator, more or less, and you are feeding that you with memories of you living in a physical world of interactions of other people, you would become a combination of the two 'you's, possessing memories both of you as a physical being, and you as a virtual entity.

In this way, you would turn the physical you and the virtual you into two parts of a whole. That is, instead of being 'you and a clone', you would become two halves that complete the whole, dependent mutually upon each other in the exact same way. You would come together weekly or daily to rejoin and feel that connectedness between the two of you, before taking the newly reformed you (reformed with the experiences and developments of each other) and continue to live in your respective worlds, until the time came for another reconnect.

What about if you send your clone on the vacation, then when he/she returns he/she uploads what he/she experienced into your mind?

This is quite a puzzle.

>>1332984

Your not that smart eh? What the other anon is trying to say is that you will become 2 separate entities, things, that will experience 2 different lives. So yeah although you could both attend the same exact job, you'd have to link each other after every day so you can share your experiences and bring each other up to date

>>1333047
Forgot to add, and you upload your mind into the clone all the information you've gathered while the clone was on vacation after it returns from its vacation?

>>1333055
But once you link up, you become both of you, rather than 'you and an extra set of memories'.

Just because those memories came from an other you doesn't mean that the lessons, experiences, or wisdoms contained in them are any less important and useful than your own memories.

As soon as you link to each other, you become a combined entity, gaining, perhaps, twice as much life experience than what one human normally would achieve.

At the moment you link, you become the same person, you both become an evolved person that combines both experiences, then you evolve as a person in your respective worlds a small amount before reconnecting and re-syncing, as it were.

You would only be one and the same during the "Mindmeld" process.

What if the clone is you, but it isn't?

>>1333147
what a tweeeest!

>>1333147
Your retarded.

>>1332974

The shit in the OPs vid looks a hell of alot closer to Terminator to me.

The robotic hand he's using actually has sensory input in the fingertips.

>>1333110
And then you would grow individually until the next mindmeld.
It's a mutual relationship where the you both grow individually so that the both of you can grow as a whole.

Rather than,
a + b = (a+b)
You become
a + b = C
Which would then become
(C+a) + (C+b) = D
...And so on as you grow as a creature that spans multiple worlds.

C (and, following, D, E, F, etc.) is a synchronization of your collective memories (sort of like a hivemind).

While, at the beginning, both a and b would start from the same (that is, both would be 0, as they are both the same, then slowly add to their memories as the go about life and thus turn into a and b), it would essentially be the same exact pattern throughout the lifespan of the physical you, which would no longer exist as a separate entity, but be adopted into the collective C (and, following, D, E, F, etc.).

Yes, you would only, truly, become 'the same' during the "Mindmeld", but the "mindmeld" would not serve as a way of ensuring you get the other's memories, but, rather, serve as a means to increase your growth as a person, by adding to your experiences and memories the memories of another you that is living a different life in a different world.

>>1333103

This is all assuming that we will be able to make full prosthetic bodies and clone your mind, memories experiences etc. (your 'ghost') If we can do all of this, then yes for that split moment that you have syncronized your 'ghost's' then you would be pretty much the exact same person, but once each clone opens their eyes and walks around they've gained a different experience from doing that and are different now.

What i'm trying to say is one person can't have to different experiences at the same time.

This also brings up the problem that are our brains capable of handling experiences from a different body, will they brain reject them as they arn't from our eyes?

>>1333236
All of this is assuming a lot of things, but I have faith in science that it can certainly be done, given enough time. If our brains cannot handle the memories, we will come up with ways for them to do so.

That's what it means to be human, after all. Working persistently toward our goals is what has gotten us where we are today.

motoko could control two cyborg bodies at once. she tried three but it wouldn't work; one of the others died.

>>1333278

Yes, but she was using her own cyborg body to control the second cyborg body, so it's not like she could do other things with the first one, if you kno wat i mean

>>1332538
It would make more sense to replace our wrist than it would to use a rotary tool?

>>1332542
Faster? What important functions you perform are limited by the speed of your limbs? And for those functions, would faster limbs be better than an alternate solution?

>>1332552
Of course I can think of things a robotic arm could do better than a human arm. But could those things be better accomplished by another solution?

The only modification I often find myself wishing for is an extra hand or two. But assuming I could communicate fluently with a local robot, I wouldn't need to have extra arms permanently grafted to me.

It's easy to think of things machines do better than people. Not so easy to think of reasons why they need to be permanent features of people. Once I improve strength in one arm, I need to improve the structure of the body to support that arm's exertions. Then I need to improve my control system. Then my own internal power supply needs to be modified to support that arm, or i need to sport an additional power supply. Then my body's defenses need to ignore and hopefully support the modifications. Assuming my body's existing systems cannot keep the new limb in good repair, I need an alternate maintenance system. Could all this instead be accomplished with something akin to a powered crowbar?

>>1332914
biomedical people bro, there are people who do research but aren't MDs, or MD students who aren't licensed.

>>1333327
Say you were to install two more arms, there aren't any additional peripheral nerves for them to connect to.

In fact there aren't any lobes within the sensory and motor cortices. You would have to either share a lobe and totally retrain the way you operate your limbs and sense things or find some way of "growing" new cortices.

Peripheral cybernetics is a piece of piss compared to central nervous system grafts. You aren't dealing with long mylenated strips of nerves that have a simple input an a simple output, you are dealing with multi-input-output perkinyon cells whose function is still only partially understood.

Perhaps with some sort of hormone and multiple operations over several months, you might be able to physically alter the structure of the brain to house additional inputs and outputs for two more limbs, maybe even a laser turret whilst you're at it.

Here's an idea, get yourself a pet mouse or a pet cat, anaethsetise it, saw open the cranium, split apart the motor and sensory corticies, wire up a device to the divided cortex, glue the skull back on and see if you can get the device to work.

You'll probably get it wrong the first few thousand animals you vivisect.

inhuman

Robotic hands performing surgery are cool and all, but I wonder what the malpractice insurance on that kind of thing costs. probably a shit ton.