Robot that uses living muscle tissue

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/01/robot-that-uses-living-muscle.html

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Welp…

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Thanks for nightmare fodder!

We do indeed live in interesting times. Remember when data on a floppy disc was cool?

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Oh, I suppose you think it’s easy hanging around here all day, flexing on command? Well, screw you meat sack, and take your fancy clipboard and your load cells with you!

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Just a couple of rat muscles? Not nearly horrifying enough. I want to see the full robot, which incorporates parts of a dozen different species, including roast pork and human brain, and the brain has a governor so it can’t tell you who it was or how it got there.

I mentally appended “for fuel” to the end of that headline and was entertained by the idea someone invented a carnivorous robot.

“The latest Roomba model never needs to return to its docking bay as long as it can find bugs around. A single plump mouse will provide days of continuous carpet cleaning activity.”

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Be nice if researchers solve some of our own musculoskeletal problems before giving them to robots. Too many quality of life ruining problems are given the cold shoulder of “well stop doing that” (that’s not always an option) or “take 2 (x)” just because they don’t kill you.

Can’t wait until the first cyborg develops tendinosis or arthritis.

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And simply steals someone else’s arm as a spare.

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How is this science? We have been making dead muscle fiber twitch since the late 1700s.

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  1. Terminators, oh Joy!
  2. This is about as freaky as the robot which can power itself using corpses.
    https://www.wired.com/2009/07/military-researchers-develop-corpse-eating-robots/

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what comic is that?

Is it just me, or has the terminator’s endoskeleton been putting on weight?

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http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/

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thank you for giving me a new archive hole to fall into.

I suspect that, in all but the grimmest cases, you wouldn’t want the solutions that are acceptable in a device where you can trivially swap out parts and have no immune system to contend with.

When both the repair and any subsequent service are, literally, major surgery the options that work in robotics get a lot less attractive.

And killing the owner gives it enough energy to clean up the crime scene before the police arrive.