Biological machines! Something from a movie or reality?

Many of us have seen the Transformers movie. A movie about biological robots whose battle for power has led them to Earth. While this seems impossible, a future with biological machines is getting tested right now by some of the best minds in the world.

What would you do with $25 million? If you answered "create a center to research the development of programmable, highly sophisticated biological machines," we regret to inform you the National Science Foundation and MIT have beaten you to the punch. The Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems Center (EBICS), will not only advance research in the emerging experimental discipline of engineered biological systems, but will lay an extensive educational groundwork for research in the field going forward.

In other words, it appears the NSF thinks this sci-fi-tastic arena is among science's most promising frontiers. And why not? The implications of advanced biological machines are vast, impacting everything from experimental biology to regenerative medicine to energy and materials sciences.

Though headquartered at MIT, research will also take place at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as at various minority-serving academic institutions, as one goal of the grant is to involve groups traditionally underrepresented in scientific research. Working together, the three universities and their partners hope to figure out the best means to create a series of sensors, actuators, processors and the like with architectures rooted in biology, eventually throwing back the curtain on a field of research that has thus far been only lightly explored.

Underscoring its commitment to pushing forward with biological systems research in the long-term, the EBICS initiative will create undergraduate- and graduate-level programs that will seed future growth at this crossroads of engineering in biology. So while EBICS has yet to declare a firm deadline for producing advanced regenerative organs or self-healing materials, the NSF is putting its money on the idea that we can get there if we put our best minds to it.

www.popsci.com...

Talk about a whole new idea behind A.I. now machines will have the ability to learn and grow by itself. I for one do not approve.

Peace,

Pajjikor

www.youtube.com...

Something to think about

Originally posted by Pajjikor

Talk about a whole new idea behind A.I. now machines will have the ability to learn and grow by itself. I for one do not approve.

Peace,

Pajjikor

Maybe we are something similar-a set of self aware self replicating AIs dumped on this rock for whatever purpose,left here in the form of single celled organisms millions of years ago,with the ability to develop/evolve?

For what purpose?Maybe so that we one day can create our own AI biobots?

reply to post by Vicodin


not really the same thing, think more along the lines of a machine being able to feel pain, emotion, and capable of independent thought.



[edit on 7-3-2010 by Pajjikor]

Biological machines???

who exactly running this project? Is his name davros by any chance??

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/40406cc4c48c111a.jpg[/atsimg]


ever scince i seen dr who, i could never handle the thought of biological machines... as their nasty pieces of work (lol)

i bet sofa manufacturers are buzzing with this news!

Originally posted by boaby_phet
Biological machines???

i bet sofa manufacturers are buzzing with this news!

lost me there'

As for who is running this project, the NSF is sponsoring the research. MIT is helping with the research.

reply to post by Pajjikor


sorry, it was a bit of british humor

en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by Pajjikor
Talk about a whole new idea behind A.I. now machines will have the ability to learn and grow by itself. I for one do not approve.

Peace,

Not so new new.

If some of what they think is a future then is surely is a devolution. We need a revolution in order to skip over the same same that whatever scientist forgot about transformation in evolution. Originality is still in the heart.

Originally posted by Pajjikor
reply to post by Vicodin

 

not really the same thing, think more along the lines of a machine being able to feel pain, emotion, and capable of independent thought.



[edit on 7-3-2010 by Pajjikor]

so feeling pain, emotion, and such, require what?
i mean if you want a Machine with an hard drive or something for their "thinking" and code it so it can feel pain and take choices by emotions ?? wouldn't that be just eliminated just to make the robot not goin in shock or something, if we would make Paramedics of them or what

Peace.