AI Summary
→ WHAT IT COVERS TED Radio Hour explores four approaches to merging technology with human bodies: robot choreographer Katie Kwan designs movement for socially fluent robots; MIT's Hugh Herr develops neural-connected prosthetics; materials scientist Anna Maria Coclita creates sensor-laden artificial skin; and Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna applies CRISPR to edit gut microbiomes for disease prevention. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Robot Movement Design:** How a robot moves near humans carries as much weight as what it does. Katie Kwan's AI-trained flock of 15 robots at Google X demonstrated that machines programmed to yield, drift, and part like a crowd — rather than march and dodge — produce positive emotional responses, including spontaneous smiling, even in skeptical first-time observers. - **AMI Surgical Procedure:** The agonist-antagonist myoneural interface (AMI), first performed in 2016, preserves the brain-muscle feedback loop during amputation by surgically reconnecting paired muscles within the residual limb. Over 100 patients have received the procedure across below-knee, above-knee, below-elbow, and above-elbow levels, enabling involuntary reflexive limb control without conscious effort from the patient. - **Bionic Cost Benchmark:** Full bionic reconstruction using AMI surgery plus robotic, sensing, and computer components currently costs approximately $100,000. Existing bionic legs without the new procedure run around $40,000. Hugh Herr projects commercial clinical availability within five years, and prior amputees can qualify for revision surgery to upgrade from conventional to AMI-connected prosthetics. - **Smart Skin Architecture:** Anna Maria Coclita's artificial skin uses nanoscopic piezoelectric cylinders thinner than a hair's cross-section to simultaneously detect touch, temperature, and humidity. When stimuli compress the polymer core, an electrical current is generated, readable by electrodes and transmittable wirelessly to neuroprosthetics or smartphones — with per-centimeter cost remaining low despite expensive initial deposition equipment. - **Precision Microbiome Editing:** Combining CRISPR gene editing with metagenomics — a tool that maps the 99% of microbial species never lab-cultured — creates a field Jennifer Doudna calls precision microbiome editing. Targeting specific gut bacteria without disrupting others could reduce livestock methane emissions by up to 80% and potentially prevent asthma, obesity, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease. → NOTABLE MOMENT After just hours of neural connection to his bionic limb, Jim Ewing's body so fully adopted the prosthetic that researchers had to warn him before powering it down. When they switched it off without notice, he described the experience as emotionally jarring — like abruptly losing his foot again. 💼 SPONSORS [{"name": "Olly", "url": "https://www.olly.com"}] 🏷️ Robotics, Bionics & Prosthetics, CRISPR & Microbiome, Artificial Skin, Human Augmentation