Robot Fish That Swims Using Frog Muscles

Pyr0Cantha writes "Umm.......found this on New Scientist quite interesting that in 1786 it was discovered that frog muscles twitched when an electrical current was put through them, only now it has been put to use."

Comments

The Six Million Dollar Man

[exi7]

"The military's interest could revolve around "exoskeletons" - prosthetic suits that will one day let soldiers run faster, jump higher or carry more weapons. Such systems might employ real muscle."

Now this is exciting! All of us /.'ers will finally be able to kick sand in other jerks faces now.

Why does this entire concept make me queasy?

[JoeGee]

I know it's not the dissection of animals for research purposes. I have done that myself.

I guess it's because with this we have the potential to go from using whole animals as laborers to using parts of animals. Instead of a video camera we could have a small box with an owl eye sticking out of it. Boy what fun at a birthday party. "Honey, do you have a fresh eye around anywhere? This one seems to be dying ..."

For some reason I have this feeling that muscle and animal parts in general best belong on a body, or on a plate. I do not know if the technology of "borrowing" pieces of animals for mechanical use is something I want around me.

And yes the theory of muscle-powered devices certainly does sound promising, but what about protecting these devices, not from oxidation, but from infection? What if your exoskeleton catches a cold? Would bioweapons -- or Sarin -- immobilize this device as easily as they currently immobilize soldiers? What about electricity? What would the benefits be, again?

Re:Why does this entire concept make me queasy?

[JoeGee]

For some reason the idea of doing medical research with animals does not strike me as wrong as this. I really do not understand my response, but something just strikes me as wrong about using living tissue in a machine. The idea of a cyborg does not even strike me as being wrong, not like this.

I guess to me it is showing a complete disrespect to the donor organism -- a whole frog only good for a few muscle filaments. The destruction of the donor does not better anything else, it just bends a mechanical widget.

There is no argument supportive of it. This does not remotely benefit humanity -- even primate collision testing had that dubious purpose. It does not feed another organism. It makes a widget go flip-flop.

This is another one of those things that brings to mind the speech of do-gooder chaotician Ian Malcom in the movie "Jurassic Park", to paraphrase liberally:

"We put so much effort into whether or not we could do this. We never thought about whether or not we should."