The Age of the Cyborg

Following the historical and philosophical grounding, this chapter draws our attention to the question of what it means to be living in a cyborg era, presents the existential and ontological significance of cybernetics, and describes in detail the known forms of cyborgization. This chapter covers the key considerations including conceptualizations of cyborgs, replacement procedures, normalization procedures, improvement procedures, reshaping procedure, and types of cyborgs (animo cyborgs, homo cyborgs, cyber cyborg, and robo cyborgs). It also deals with targeted areas of human-cyborg enhancement, including bionic arms, bionic fingers, bionic legs, bionic ear, bionic eyes, bionic hearts, bionic skin, bionic tongues, bionic brains, and bionic clothes. The importance of computer interfaces and key applications of cyborg research are described throughout the subsection of this chapter, such as Kevin Warwick's and Stelarc cyborg projects, the popularisation of cyborgs in art, Steve Mann's wearable computers, augmented reality goggles, and robo-cyborgs.

Composites of functional polymers: Toward physical intelligence using flexible and soft materials

Materials that can assist with perception and responsivity of an engineered machine are said to promote physical intelligence. Physical intelligence may be important for flexible and soft materials that will be used in applications like soft robotics, wearable computers, and healthcare. These applications require stimuli responsivity, sensing, and actuation that allow a machine to perceive and react to its environment. The development of materials that exhibit some form of physical intelligence has relied on functional polymers and composites that contain these polymers. This review will focus on composites of functional polymers that display physical intelligence by assisting with perception, responsivity, or by off-loading computation. Composites of liquid crystal elastomers, shape-memory polymers, hydrogels, self-healing materials, and transient materials and their functionalities are examined with a viewpoint that considers physical intelligence. Graphic Abstract