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The human body is delicate, susceptible to damage, and once certain components are lost, they can never be fully restored. Fortunately, scientists around the world are working tirelessly to replace every part, transforming us into cyborgs.
10. Highly Sensitive Electronic Skin
The skin plays the crucial role of covering and shielding your entire body, making it the most vulnerable organ. When skin is burned or torn, the current solution is to graft new skin from another area of your body. However, a highly effective synthetic skin might be closer than we think, thanks to research conducted by Stanford scientists.
Stanford's Zhenan Bao has created a highly flexible, incredibly durable, and extraordinarily sensitive material that could serve as the foundation for future synthetic skin. Although others have attempted to create artificial skin before, Bao's material is more responsive to touch than any previous version. It features organic transistors and an elastic layer, allowing it to stretch without damage. Additionally, it is self-powered, containing a series of elastic solar cells.
9. Heartbeats Created in a Petri Dish
For years, scientists have been exploring the potential of stem cells to grow hearts, and this year they reached a groundbreaking achievement by creating heart tissue capable of beating on its own.
A team from the University of Pittsburgh used stem cells derived from skin to create MCPs, a unique type of cell that serves as a precursor to cardiovascular tissue. These cells were then placed on a 3-D scaffold designed to support a mouse heart. Within 20 days, the newly created heart began beating at 40 to 50 beats per minute.
This heart is too weak to pump blood, which is the primary function of a new heart. However, the tissue shows great potential for repairing heart muscles that have been damaged.
8. Prosthetic Hands Capable of Sensing Touch
Current prosthetic hands do little more than occupy the space between your body and the air. While they can grip objects and assist with balance, they lack one of the most vital functions of the human hand—the sense of touch. Prosthetic users can’t feel if they’re touching something unless they visually confirm it.
A research team from the University of Chicago has tackled this issue by creating hands that transmit electric signals to the brain. They began by testing on monkeys, observing how their brains react to touch. When given prosthetic hands that stimulate their brain this way, the monkeys respond as if they are physically touching objects themselves.
If these same signals are programmed into artificial human limbs, amputees could receive prosthetic hands unlike any we've developed so far.
7. Thought-Controlled Bionic Legs
Bionic legs, while a major advancement for amputees, still lack direct nerve connections to the body. This makes walking with them difficult and exhausting. However, last year, Seattle resident Zac Vawter became the first person to be fitted with a thought-controlled leg, a bionic limb that receives signals directly from his mind.
While this technology has been available for arms, legs are significantly more complex. And since a misinterpreted signal could lead to dangerous situations, such as jumping off a bridge or stepping in front of a moving car, thought-controlled legs require far more precise programming than their arm counterparts. As one researcher wisely noted, “If you’re using a bionic arm and it malfunctions, the elbow might just shift a little. But if the prosthetic leg malfunctions . . that could be a serious safety concern.”
Vawter climbed 103 floors of a Chicago skyscraper with his bionic leg, though its creators are still fine-tuning it. To make it practical for daily use, they need to reduce its size and weight. The next version (possibly the iLeg Air?) might fulfill the Army’s goal for a bionic leg—10,000 steps without needing to recharge.
6. Miniature Human Brains
Brain death is quite the inconvenience for anyone who enjoys being alive, and if you’re hoping to swap yours out for a backup, you’re out of luck. While we might one day figure out how to transplant brains into new skulls, the brain is not just any organ. It holds all your thoughts and memories. Even if a new brain were implanted in your head, you’d still be gone, so the idea of creating artificial brains might sound far-fetched.
Despite the challenges, scientists have successfully grown real human brains in a lab. Starting with only stem cells, researchers in Austria managed to create brains that resemble those of nine-week-old fetuses. These miniature brains are about the size of peas and, so far, lack the ability to think. The one barrier preventing these brains from advancing beyond this stage and becoming fully functional is the absence of a blood supply.
While these brains aren't being implanted into any bodies, they are proving to be an invaluable resource for scientists researching brain diseases.
53. 3D-Printed Ears
While we've had the technology to restore hearing artificially for decades, internal implants don’t address the outer parts of the ear. You might assume that replicating the large flaps ('pinnae') on either side of the head would be easy, as they’re made of skin and cartilage, not complex organs. However, scientists have struggled with creating lifelike artificial ears. Traditional replacements often resemble plastic toys in both look and feel.
This year, however, researchers introduced a new technique that uses real cells to create flexible, realistic ears. The cells, sourced from rats and cows, form a collagen gel that can be molded into any shape. When placed in a 3-D-printed mold of a human ear, the gel takes the form of an ear in less than an hour. After a few days of nutrient growth, the artificial ear is ready to be implanted in a subject.
These artificial ears will be a major advancement for those who have suffered ear injuries or have microtia, a condition that prevents their ears from ever developing.
4. Noses Capable of Detecting Diseases
While scientists are working hard to create organs that match the body’s natural functions, why limit their creativity?
When researchers at the University of Illinois aimed to develop a device capable of identifying chemicals by scent, they didn’t just rely on the sensitivity of the human nose. Instead, they engineered an artificial nose that uses the smell of bacteria to detect and diagnose specific diseases.
The result isn’t a traditional nose at all—it’s a bottle filled with liquid nutrients that grows bacteria. After a blood sample is added and the 'nose' sniffs for a few days, the bottle’s dots will change color to show which bacteria, if any, it has detected.
3. Fingers That Can Store Digital Files
When Finnish programmer Jerry Jalava was involved in a motorcycle accident in 2008, he faced a double misfortune. Not only did he lose his finger, which was a major setback for someone who types for a living, but he also had to endure a medical team that thought they were stand-up comedians. Upon learning about his profession, one surgeon humorously suggested that Jalava should buy a “USB finger drive.”
Instead of taking offense, Jalava used the doctor’s cheesy comment as inspiration. He went ahead and built a prosthetic finger with two gigabytes of digital storage. Now, he can plug his finger into a computer by simply peeling back the nail to reveal the USB connector. He can also remove the entire finger at any time and hand it to a friend to use.
What’s next? Jalava plans to upgrade the finger with an RFID tag and add wireless functionality. He also intends to increase its memory, though that seems unnecessary. If he ever runs out of storage, he has nine more fingers he could replace with flash drives.
2. Artificial Eyes
As previously mentioned, while we’ve been able to restore hearing for the deaf for quite some time, restoring sight for the blind remains a much more complex challenge. When people lose their vision, the retinas no longer transmit signals from the photoreceptors to the brain. To create an artificial eye, we would need to understand how the retina processes these signals, a puzzle that scientists have yet to solve.
That is, until recently. Scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College have finally made a breakthrough—at least with mice and monkeys. They’ve successfully developed artificial retinas, featuring chips that convert images into electronic signals, and tiny projectors that transform those signals back into light.
These artificial eyes have indeed restored sight in blind mice. Follow-up tests on monkeys are proving promising for future human trials, as the retinas of monkeys and humans function in a similar way.
1. Artificial Pancreas
The pancreas is responsible for producing insulin, and when it fails to do so, individuals with diabetes are forced to inject the hormone manually. As a result, diabetics find themselves trapped in a stressful cycle of constantly monitoring their blood sugar levels and injecting insulin whenever necessary.
An artificial pancreas, however, automatically administers insulin into the body. This device resembles a standard insulin pump that continuously delivers insulin through the skin, but it also constantly monitors blood sugar levels and adjusts itself accordingly. This means that even while the user sleeps, there is no risk of experiencing a dangerous drop in blood sugar leading to shock.
Unlike some of the other technologies on this list, artificial pancreases are not still in the development phase. The device already exists and was FDA approved for sale this past September.
+ Bonus: Robotic Plants Grow Roots
Now, let's switch gears. We've shown you various human body parts being replaced, but here’s something a bit different: robotic plant roots. Yes, you heard that right—robots that grow roots, which are drawn toward water and respond to changes in the soil.
You may wonder about the purpose of artificial roots, especially since plant parts are, unlike human ones, fairly simple to replicate in nature. However, Barbara Mazzolai, a designer from the Italian Institute of Technology, explains that these robots have numerous potential applications. They could assist with space exploration and even serve as flexible tubes for doctors to explore the body.
We're still unsure about this one. Sure, we’re open to replacing body parts with machines, but robo-plants growing inside of us? That seems a bit strange.
