Bionics (also known as biomimicry, biomimetics, bio-inspiration, biognosis, and close to bionical creativity engineering) is the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology. The word bionic was coined by Jack E. Steele in 1958, possibly originating from the Greek word ????, bion, pronounced [bi:on] (“bee-on”), meaning ‘unit of life’ and the suffix -ic, meaning ‘like’ or ‘in the manner of’, hence ‘like life’.
Some dictionaries, however, explain the word as being formed as a portmanteau from biology + electronics.
It was popularized by the 1970s television series The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, which were influenced by Steele’s work, and feature humans given superhuman powers by electromechanical implants. The transfer of technology between lifeforms and manufactures is, according to proponents of bionic technology, desirable because evolutionary pressure typically forces living organisms, including fauna and flora, to become highly optimized and efficient.
A classical example is the development of dirt- and water-repellent paint (coating) from the observation that the surface of the lotus flower plant is practically unsticky for anything (the lotus effect).
Amanda Kitts is mobbed by four- and five-year-olds as she enters the classroom at the Kiddie Kottage Learning Center near Knoxville, Tennessee. “Hey kids, how’re my babies today? ” she says, patting shoulders and ruffling hair. Slender and energetic, she has operated this day-care center and two others for almost 20 years.
She crouches down to talk to a small girl, putting her hands on her knees.
“The robot arm! ” several kids cry. “You remember this, huh? ” says Kitts, holding out her left arm. She turns her hand palm up. There is a soft whirring sound. If you weren’t paying close attention, you’d miss it. She bends her elbow, accompanied by more whirring. “Make it do something silly! ” one girl says. “Silly? Remember how I can shake your hand? ” Kitts says, extending her arm and rotating her wrist. A boy reaches out, hesitantly, to touch her fingers.
What he brushes against is flesh-colored plastic, fingers curved slightly inward. Underneath are three motors, a metal frame, and a network of sophisticated electronics. The assembly is topped by a white plastic cup midway up Kitts’s biceps, encircling a stump that is almost all that remains from the arm she lost in a car accident in 2006. Almost all, but not quite. Within her brain, below the level of consciousness, lives an intact image of that arm, a phantom. When Kitts thinks about flexing her elbow, the phantom moves.
Impulses racing down from her brain are picked up by electrode sensors in the white cup and converted into signals that turn motors, and the artificial elbow bends. “I don’t really think about it. I just move it,” says the 40-year-old, who uses both this standard model and a more experimental arm with even more control. “After my accident I felt lost, and I didn’t understand why God would do such a terrible thing to me. These days I’m just excited all the time, because they keep on improving the arm. One day I’ll be able to feel things with it and clap my hands together in time to the songs my kids are singing. Kitts is living proof that, even though the flesh and bone may be damaged or gone, the nerves and parts of the brain that once controlled it live on. In many patients, they sit there waiting to communicate—dangling telephone wires, severed from a handset. With microscopic electrodes and surgical wizardry, doctors have begun to connect these parts in other patients to devices such as cameras and microphones and motors. As a result, the blind can see, the deaf can hear, and Amanda Kitts can fold her shirts.
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