The new Blade Runner sequel takes us back to a world where cunning androids made from organic body parts challenge the power and emotions of their human creators. Iida Fumiya assembles robots, inspired by the creations of biological nature, and asks the question: how close are our own technologies to creating "replicants" from "Blade Runner 2049"?
You see, we are too far from making robots with human capabilities. But advances in so-called soft robotics show a promising path forward for technologies that could provide a new foundation for the androids of the future.
Scientifically, the biggest problem is the repetition of the complexity of the human body. Each of us is made up of millions and millions of cells, and we have no idea how to build such a complex machine that will be indistinguishable from us humans. Today's most sophisticated aircraft, such as the world's largest airliner, the Airbus A380, are made up of millions of parts. But in order to match the level of human complexity, they must be a million times more complex in quality and quantity.
There are currently three different ways to blur the line between humans and robots. Unfortunately, these approaches are only starting points and are not even close to recreating the Blade Runner world.
There are humanoid robots built from scratch and equipped with artificial sensors, motors and computers that work together to recreate the human body and movement. Nevertheless, the improvement of modern androids will not bring them closer to humans, because every artificial component like sensors or engines is hopelessly primitive compared to biological counterparts.
There is also technology for creating a cyborg, where the human body is augmented and augmented by machines such as robotic limbs and wearable or implantable devices. These technologies are also very far from matching our own body parts.
Finally, there are genetic manipulation techniques, where the genetic code of an organism changes to modify the body of the organism. Although we have been able to identify individual genes and have learned to manipulate them, we still have a limited understanding of how a whole person arises from the genetic code. So we don't know to what extent we can program the code to develop whatever we want.
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Soft Robotics: The Way Forward?
And yet we can move robotics closer to the Blade Runner world by developing other technologies and, in particular, turning to nature for inspiration. The field of soft robotics is a good example. Over the past ten years, robot researchers have made significant efforts to make robots soft, deformable, flexible, and compressible.
This kind of technology is inspired by the fact that 90% of the human body is composed of soft substances such as skin, hair and tissue. This is because most of the fundamental functions of our body rely on soft parts that can change shape, from the heart and lungs pumping fluid around the body to our eye lenses. Cells can even change shape to trigger the process of division, self-emission, and ultimately the evolution of the body.
The softness of our bodies is the source of all the functionality the body needs to stay alive. With the ability to create soft machines, we could at least take a step towards the Blade Runner robot world. The latest technological advances include masterpieces like an artificial heart made of soft functional materials that pumps fluid as it deforms. Likewise, soft, wearable gloves can increase the grip. And the so-called "epidermal electronics" will allow us to tattoo electronic circuits on our biological skin.
Softness is the key word that brings people and technology together. Sensors, motors, and computers suddenly integrate into human bodies when they become soft, and the boundary between us and external devices becomes ambiguous, just as soft contact lenses became part of our eyes.
However, the biggest challenge remains how to make individual parts of the soft robot's body physically adaptable through self-healing, growth and differentiation. After all, every part of a living organism also lives in biological systems that allow the body to adapt and develop, and this function will make machines indistinguishable from ourselves.
It is impossible to predict when our world will become like the world of Blade Runner, and if it does, it will certainly be far in the future. But as long as there is a desire to build machines that are indistinguishable from humans, people will tirelessly move towards this goal and one day they will achieve it.
Ilya Khel