In 2018, Ford confirmed it was rolling out 75 EksoVest upper-body exoskeletons in a number of its auto plants around the world – at the time of writing, the largest adoption of exoskeletons to date.5 Volkswagen is also exploring rolling out rival exoskeletons at its plants.6
There are actually many different types of exoskeletons, and not all of them designed with industrial super-strength in mind. Many are designed for clinical rehabilitation purposes, for instance, by helping to provide support to the hips, legs, and lower torso. The Rewalk Robotics Restore soft exoskeleton, which is designed to help stroke patients walk effectively and efficiently, is a good example.
MIT has developed a robot that can understand signals from your muscles and respond accordingly, to help you lift heavy objects. The mechanical system works by reading the electrical signals from your biceps – measuring your flex, in other words – to get a sense of how you’re lifting. It can then work out how best to help you lift. It might not be for the squeamish, though, since it requires electrodes to be inserted into your arm!7
If you don’t fancy electrodes in your arm, how about a robotic tail? Designers in Japan have developed a robo-tail that straps around the waist and helps improve people’s balance.8 It’s not commercially available, but the designers predict robo-tail technology could in future help with rehabilitation or to augment balance for workers in dangerous locations, such as on a construction site.
Improving People’s Sight
Ocumetrics has created a Bionic Lens that claims to give wearers vision that’s three times better than what we’d normally consider perfect (i.e. 20/20) vision. The Bionic Lens comes folded up, like a taco, and is implanted into the eye in a quick, painless procedure – after which it unfolds itself over the eye in a matter of seconds, immediately correcting your sight.9 If the lens becomes widely available, pending clinical trials, it could make glasses and regular contact lenses a thing of the past.
Elsewhere, Samsung has been granted a patent for smart contact lenses that are capable of taking photos and recording video. The design also includes motion sensors, which would allow wearers to control devices with eye movements.10 If Samsung does end up making the lenses, they could become a serious challenger for smart glasses, such as Google Glass (see augmented reality, Trend 8).
Restoring Movement Through Advanced Robotic Limbs
Prosthetics have come a long way, and the cutting edge is prosthetics that are controlled by neural activity to restore motor function to amputees. One example is an advanced mind-controlled robotic arm created by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.11
Developed by Haptix, DEKA, and the University of Utah, the Luke neuroprosthetic hand (yes, it’s named after Luke Skywalker) aims to restore the sense of touch to amputees by helping recipients “feel” intuitively through the prosthetic.12 In tests, the wearer was able to pick up an egg without cracking it and hold his wife’s hand – and thanks to electrodes implanted in the subject’s forearm, the hand triggered touch sensations such as vibrations, pain, pressure, and tightening.
Elsewhere, at the National University of Singapore, scientists have created an artificial skin that can sense better than human nerves, and could one day be used to cover prosthetic limbs.13
Implanting Lab-Grown Organs
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School have teamed up to create stem cells that can be used to form heart tissue. The tissue even beats when given an electric shock. And at the University of Glasgow and the University of the West of Scotland, scientists have used bone marrow cells to create a putty that can be used for bone grafts.14
We could even 3D print organs. For example, bioprinting company Organovo has been able to 3D print human liver tissue patches, which have been successfully implanted into mice15 (more on that in Trend 24).
Augmenting the Human Brain Through Mind-Reading Technology
In the future, wearable technology may not be limited to enhancing humans’ physical activity, but our mental activity, too. Here are two prominent examples of the move towards merging humans with computers:
In a study backed by Facebook, scientists at the University of California San Francisco have created a brain–computer interface that translates brain signals into dialogue – meaning technology can decode speech directly from the human brain, without us having to say or type a word.16
Never one to be outdone by Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk’s Neuralink company is working towards an ultimate goal of merging the human brain with AI, with human trials potentially coming this year.17
Key Challenges
As the examples in this chapter show, we’re clearly well on our way to augmented humans. The prospect of humans merging with machines no longer seems like the imaginative plot of a sci-fi movie – but is a genuine goal for some technology companies. But with this ambitious goal comes some major challenges.
For one thing, if projects like the mind-reading technology being developed by Facebook and Neuralink do succeed, it could have huge implications for privacy. Do we really want AI to be able to decode our thoughts? And do we really want that data in the hands of for-profit companies like Facebook? I know I don’t. Before technology like this becomes the norm, there would need to be some serious leaps in people’s understanding of the precious data they’re giving over to these companies (considering that most people today, in my experience, massively underestimate the things companies like Facebook and Google already know about them). And the companies offering this technology would need to make genuine strides in how seriously they take data privacy and ethics.
And at a societal level, we could be heading towards even greater divides between rich and poor, between the haves and the have-nots. Technology is promising to help us live longer and healthier lives – maybe even the chance to live forever – but probably only for those who can afford it. Imagine a society in which the rich are effectively superhumans that live forever, and everyone else is enormously disadvantaged. Not a happy thought, is it? (There’s also a wider ethical question around whether we should want to live exceedingly long lives, given the huge strain that would put on our planet.)
Finally, as humans begin to merge with machines, we may ultimately