TED - Hugh Herr: The new bionics that let us run, climb and dance

TED HughHerr bionics Nature-Design index

"A person can never be broken. Our built environment, our technologies, are broken and disabled.
We the people need not accept our limitations, but can transcend disability through technological innovation.
Indeed, through fundamental advances in bionics in this century, we will set the technological foundation for an enhanced human experience, and we will end disability."

TED-2014-Herr-Bionics 与此相关的TED talk是 TED-2014-Sengeh-Sockets(Title: The sore problem of prosthetic limbs, By David Sengeh)，大家都是MIT media 实验室Biomechatronics组的。

伴舞的音乐很好听，Ring my bells, Enrique Iglesias.

Human beings and technology

• Nature is driving design: from synthetic constructs that resemble biological materials to computational methods that emulate neural processes.
  Design is also driving nature: in realms of genetics, regenerative medicine and synthetic biology, designers are growing novel technologies not foreseen or anticipated by nature.
  Bionics explores the interplay between biology and design: bridge the gap between disability and ability, between human limitation and human potential. 人与自然
• A human being can never be broken. Technology is broken. Technology is inadequate. This simple but powerful idea was a call to arms to advance technology for the elimination of my own disability and ultimately the disability of others. 没有做不到，只有想不到
• Narrow, wedged feet allowed me to climb steep rock fissures where the human foot cannot penetrate, and spiked feet enabled me to climb vertical ice walls without ever experiencing muscle leg fatigue. Through technological innovation, I returned to my sport stronger and better. 青出于蓝而胜于蓝。 TED-2014-Cliffords-Stronger: better, stronger, and tougher.
• I imagined a future world where technology so advanced could rid the world of disability, a world in which neural implants would allow the visually impaired to see, a world in which the paralyzed could walk via body exoskeletons. 我有一个梦想 I have a dream
• At the MIT Media Lab, we've established the Center for Extreme Bionics. The mission of the center is to put forth fundamental science and technological capability that will allow the biomechatronic and regenerative repair of humans across a broad range of brain and body disabilities. Bionics entails the engineering of extreme interfaces. 科学+技术+工程. 数学+物理+计算机. 《大连接》connected. 人与自然

Mechanical interface

how my limbs are attached to my biological body.

• We have no idea how to attach things to our bodies. 肌肤之亲
• We combine these imaging and robotic data to build a mathematical description of my biological limb. learning models from data
• we've discovered optimality is where the body is stiff, the synthetic skin should be soft, where the body is soft, the synthetic skin is stiff, and this mirroring occurs across all tissue compliances. 以柔克刚。他强任他强，清风拂山岗。
• will no longer be designed and manufactured using artisan strategies, but rather data-driven quantitative frameworks.私人定制，个性化推荐

Dynamic interface

how limbs move like flesh and bone.

• Bionic propulsion: At heel strike, under computer control, the system controls stiffness to attenuate the shock of the limb hitting the ground. Then at mid-stance, the bionic limb outputs high torques and powers to lift the person into the walking stride, comparable to how muscles work in the calf region.
• We're beginning the age in which machines attached to our bodies will make us stronger and faster and more efficient. 冰水为之而寒于水 The Second Machine Age

Electrical interface

how do my bionic limbs communicate with my nervous system?

• persons like myself will not only have synthetic limbs that move like flesh and bone, but actually feel like flesh and bone. "STL containers aren't just good. They’re really good", in Effective STL by Scott Meyers.
• She wanted to return to the dance floor. TED-2014-Cliffords-Stronger: she wanted to be there to have her voice heard one more time.
• I brought in MIT scientists with expertise in prosthetics, robotics, machine learning and biomechanics.
• Bionics is not only about making people stronger and faster. Our expression, our humanity can be embedded into electromechanics. 我的机器人女友
• We will not be intimidated, brought down, diminished, conquered or stopped by acts of violence. 浪漫主义运动

TED: ideas worth spreading

• Basic levels of physiological function should be a part of our human rights. Every person should have the right to live life without disability if they so choose -- the right to live life without severe depression; the right to see a loved one in the case of seeing impaired; or the right to walk or to dance, in the case of limb paralysis or limb amputation.
  As a society, we can achieve these human rights if we accept the proposition that humans are not disabled. A person can never be broken. Our built environment, our technologies, are broken and disabled.
  We the people need not accept our limitations, but can transcend disability through technological innovation. Indeed, through fundamental advances in bionics in this century, we will set the technological foundation for an enhanced human experience, and we will end disability.

“Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God’s gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences.”
—Freeman Dyson （1923——）