Over this week, I’ve been re-watching one of my favorite Sci-Fi channel (when it was still called that) shows: Farscape. Within the show, a group of misfits from the stars gallivant across the universe in a ship known as a “Leviathan.” This ship is special in that it not only has the capacity to hold a large crew and cargo, but the ship itself is alive. The concept of biologically active machines has its ground in human imagination, and today, I am going to delve a little into the kinds of biomechanical technologies that are being developed as we speak. Rodney Brooks has an abstract at the AI lab of MIT that highlights some of the specific problems as well as some of the angles from which scientists are beginning to work from in creating these new breeds of machines. In this prospectus, the author proposes three new directions from which fellow researchers can begin to look at the problem of biomechanical engineering. According to Rodney Brooks, this should be the guiding direction for those interested in the production of living machines:

1) The machines should have capabilities that robots currently do not possess but that living machines do possess. The first of these are self-regulating or homeostatic qualities such as “self-repair, self-reproduction, and energy self-sufficiency.” Obviously, machines do not possess these abilities (yet), but they would be greatly appreciated in almost any application.

2) Living machines need to learn how to self-organize and create physical attributes based on a complex environment. This means that the machines need to learn how to organize their neural and physical functions to match their purpose and environment rapidly.

3) Biomechanical researchers need to spend more time coming up with mathematical theorems and equations for the propagation of the above topics on living beings and systems in order to apply them to their robotic counterparts.

The concept of living machines would have far reaching implications on the general populace and on the way we think about technology generally. The machines would cease becoming objects and the relationship between man and machine would mutate to a symbiotic relationship between living organisms to accomplish the all-inclusive grand act of survival.

So what kind of work has been done so far on biomachinery? A lot, really, but the definition is still up for debate. There are plenty of machines that are shaped and designed after animals, but these are really more of biology-inspired machines: biomimetic engineering. To qualify as biomechanical, a living organism must be used in the manner that a machine is. Here is an example of a very simple machine that was developed for water purification by the name of Living Machines. Note that the microorganisms that are used for the purification of water were specially designed and created in a lab. A sustainable environment is created for the microorganisms and the system is essentially self-sustaining. This qualifies the same kind of drive as the definition that was offered earlier above. The machine must be capable of sustaining itself as well as completing the task for which it was designed. This is a link to the work of Eduardo Torres-Jara who is developing a protocol for a robot that “eats.” In this case, the act of eating is to find electrical current for which to power its batteries, but the act of self-regulation for the robot brings it one step closer to functioning in a homeostatic manner. Though the original design and implementation of robots that look for their own power-source has been shortcut into the aggregation of solar cells on many robots, there are a few that rely on actual chemical breakdown of food. This link shows the “Chew-Chew” train which is made up of many blocks of living fuel cells that are microbacteria. The bacteria is fed sugar-cubes and the sugar-cubes are broken down and used as energy just as a living organism uses them. Another piece to add to this developing technology is the work of Dr. Ben Whalley from the University of Reading. He has built the world’s first cyborg; the machine (if it can still so be called) is piloted by the brain of a rat that is kept in a bell jar and transmits data via bluetooth impulses to the robot. The robot can learn (since the primary interface is the brain of a living organism) but the entire design of the “body” is robotic. Here is a video of the object at work:

So what does the future hold for biomachines? Quite a bit, truthfully. The applications are beginning to trickle down, but scientists are theorizing that certain bacteria can aid in electrical conductivity and with the application of genetic replication and the ability to engineer organisms to do practically anything, the future of biomechanical engineering seems wide open. Next week, I’ll delve a little more into the science of genetic engineering to look at obscure topics such as cloning, genetic replication, genetic mutation, and their role in the development of human civilization.