Hugh Herr

For people speculating how our beloved world will eventually come to an end: robots killing their inferior human creators and genetically-modified super-intelligent-mutants wiping us all out are two popular hypotheses among others (big asteroid hitting earth)! So when the term “bio-hybrid” came to birth, I am sure the cyborg connotation touched some nerves.

As far as I know, the term bio-hybrid came out of MIT. It is used to refer to robotic limbs hybridized with our human nerve system. By combining tissue engineering, neurotechnology, material science, surgery, and robotics, a new generation of artificial prosthetics were developed to allow control of metals and plastics by brain signals. The earliest reference I found on the Internet is when the Department of Veterans Affairs issued a $7.2 million grant to MIT and Brown University in 2004. Less than 3 years later, some remarkable bio-hybrid prototypes really emerged. ... continued