1st Fully Bionic Man Walks, Talks and Breathes


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He walks, he talks and he has a beating heart, but he's not human ? he's the world's first fully bionic man.

Like Frankenstein's monster, cobbled together from a hodgepodge of body parts, the bionic man is an amalgam of the most advanced human prostheses ? from robotic limbs to artificial organs to a blood-pumping circulatory system.

The creature "comes to life" in "The Incredible Bionic Man," premiering Sunday (Oct. 20) on the Smithsonian Channel at 9 p.m. EDT/8 p.m. CDT.

    Roboticists Rich Walker and Matthew Godden of Shadow Robot Co. in England led the assembly of the bionic man from prosthetic body parts and artificial organs donated by laboratories around the world.

"Our job was to take the delivery of a large collection of body parts ? organs, limbs, eyes, heads ? and over a frantic six weeks, turn those parts into a bionic man," Walker told LiveScience during an interview. But it's not as simple as connecting everything like Tinkertoys. "You put a prosthetic part on a human who is missing that part," Walker said. "We had no human; we built a human for the prosthetic parts to occupy."

The robot, which cost almost $1 million to build, was modeled in some physical aspects after Bertolt Meyer, a social psychologist at the University of Zurich, in Switzerland, who wears one of the world's most advanced bionic hands.

    The bionic man has the same prosthetic hand as Meyer ? the i-LIMB made by Touch Bionics ? with a wrist that can fully rotate and motors in each finger. The hand's grasping abilities are impressive, but the bionic man still drops drinks sometimes.

"He's not the world's best bartender," Walker said.

The robot sports a pair of robotic ankles and feet from BiOM in Bedford, Mass., designed and worn by bioengineer Hugh Herr of MIT's Media Lab, who lost his own legs after getting trapped in a blizzard as a teenager.

To support his prosthetic legs, the bionic man wears a robotic exoskeleton dubbed "Rex," made by REX Bionics in New Zealand. His awkward, jerky walk makes him more Frankensteinian than ever.

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Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.

 

 

Well somebody had to do it :p

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Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.

 

 

Well somebody had to do it :p

 

I would like to see new version of 6 million dollars man TV show...

 

hopefully they come back with new technologies.

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I would like to see new version of 6 million dollars man TV show...

 

hopefully they come back with new technologies.

Nah, it'd just be like the remakes of Knight Rider

stick to the memories, they're better

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I would like to see new version of 6 million dollars man TV show...

 

hopefully they come back with new technologies.

 

They tried that with Bionic Woman.  Didn't exactly work out too well. :p

 

Classic shows like this shouldn't be remade; it just hurts the memories.

 

As for the article.. It's not a "bionic man".  At best, it's a robot, but it's not a bionic man.

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I'm the bionic man

(computerized leg prosthesis w/fully articulated foot/ankle & shock absorber and a remote control fob, auto-focusing eye lens implants w/UV filters etc.)

;)

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surely this would be android man as none of him is human

 

He walks, he talks and he has a beating heart, but he's not human ? he's the world's first fully bionic man.

Like Frankenstein's monster, cobbled together from a hodgepodge of body parts, the bionic man is an amalgam of the most advanced human prostheses ? from robotic limbs to artificial organs to a blood-pumping circulatory system.

The creature "comes to life" in "The Incredible Bionic Man," premiering Sunday (Oct. 20) on the Smithsonian Channel at 9 p.m. EDT/8 p.m. CDT.

    Roboticists Rich Walker and Matthew Godden of Shadow Robot Co. in England led the assembly of the bionic man from prosthetic body parts and artificial organs donated by laboratories around the world.

"Our job was to take the delivery of a large collection of body parts ? organs, limbs, eyes, heads ? and over a frantic six weeks, turn those parts into a bionic man," Walker told LiveScience during an interview. But it's not as simple as connecting everything like Tinkertoys. "You put a prosthetic part on a human who is missing that part," Walker said. "We had no human; we built a human for the prosthetic parts to occupy."

The robot, which cost almost $1 million to build, was modeled in some physical aspects after Bertolt Meyer, a social psychologist at the University of Zurich, in Switzerland, who wears one of the world's most advanced bionic hands.

    The bionic man has the same prosthetic hand as Meyer ? the i-LIMB made by Touch Bionics ? with a wrist that can fully rotate and motors in each finger. The hand's grasping abilities are impressive, but the bionic man still drops drinks sometimes.

"He's not the world's best bartender," Walker said.

The robot sports a pair of robotic ankles and feet from BiOM in Bedford, Mass., designed and worn by bioengineer Hugh Herr of MIT's Media Lab, who lost his own legs after getting trapped in a blizzard as a teenager.

To support his prosthetic legs, the bionic man wears a robotic exoskeleton dubbed "Rex," made by REX Bionics in New Zealand. His awkward, jerky walk makes him more Frankensteinian than ever.

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They tried that with Bionic Woman.  Didn't exactly work out too well. :p

 

Classic shows like this shouldn't be remade; it just hurts the memories.

 

As for the article.. It's not a "bionic man".  At best, it's a robot, but it's not a bionic man.

 

Well they should because they make every few years for the kids/family generation and new technologies ...

 

The old shows have black bars on the sides on new TVs...  the kids ask the parents "what's up with that black thing on TV?"

 

I'd like to see new shows for newer TVs that cover all the screen.

 

You can keep old shows in the memories.. that is fine and you don't have to watch the new ones..

 

I would.. because I like 'high tech' technologies.

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^ There are -plenty- of new shows around as it is; there's no need to go raping old shows like they do the movies.  Besides which, not ONE remake of an old TV show has actually worked for long.  Even the Battlestar Galactica remake went all screwed up after a couple of seasons.

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It's not bionic anything... Bionic means Biological + Mechanical... This is just a fancy robot with a lot of tubes... and mechanical organs...

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It's not bionic anything... Bionic means Biological + Mechanical... This is just a fancy robot with a lot of tubes... and mechanical organs...

 

I think the point they were trying (and failing) to make is that their robot is built entirely of parts used to replace parts on humans.

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Only the 64-bit CPU from the Atari Jaguar home video entertainment system is powerful enough to accomplish that.

 

Right...   you can control the robot just like you control a drone in the sky.

 

you can look up YouTube for that related stuff ...

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Knight Rider 2008-09 wasn't a remake. It was a continuation of the original series. Mike Traceur was the son of Michael Knight.

 

22 years later Knight Rider came back in 2008 with newest technologies ... such as new cameras for filming, new effects that are better than the 80's effects..   you get the idea.

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Yes I get the idea ... that it wasn't a remake!

 

it doesn't matter that it is a remake or not...     and it doesn't matter if they have same plots/scripts from 80's...      they have new plots/scripts for new show with new technologies.

 

Since we have HD/Blu-ray and new editing softwares for effects (or whatever), I would like to see old shows to come back with new stuff that we didn't have this stuff in the past.

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The only remake/continuation of an old TV series that has even worked in the last 25 years, let alone come close to the original, is in the Star Trek and Stargate franchises, and Frasier.

 

I love the old Bionic Man. It's one of those old shows that is so horrible and cheesy it's great to watch after "relaxing" late at night. I've got the whole series :)

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