On the topic of computers, artificial intelligence and robots, Northern Illinois University Professor David Gunkel says science fiction is fast becoming “science fact.”

Fictional depictions of artificial intelligence have run the gamut from the loyal Robot in “Lost in Space” to the killer computer HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the endearing C-3PO and R2-D2 of “Star Wars” fame.

While those robotic personifications are still the stuff of fiction, the issues they raised have never been more relevant than today, says Gunkel, an NIU Presidential Teaching Professor in the Department of Communication.

In his new book, “The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics” (The MIT Press), Gunkel ratchets up the debate over whether and to what extent intelligent and autonomous machines of our own making can be considered to have legitimate moral responsibilities and any legitimate claim to moral treatment.

A bionic eye has given an Australian woman partial sight and researchers say it is an important step towards eventually helping visually impaired people get around independently.

Dianne Ashworth, who has severe vision loss due to the inherited condition retinitis pigmentosa, was fitted with a prototype bionic eye in May at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital.

"It was really funny when it switched on I was waiting, waiting … I had these goggles on and I didn’t know what to expect, and I don’t know if anyone did know what I was going to see … Then all of a sudden I went ‘yep’ I could see a little flash and it was like a little, I suppose, a splinter … There were different shapes and dark black, lines of dark black and white lines together … Then that turned into splotches of black with white around them and cloud-like images … I can remember when the first bigger image came I just went ‘Wow,’ because I just didn’t expect it at all but it was amazing," she said.

The bionic eye, designed, built and tested by the Bionic Vision Australia, a consortium of researchers partially funded by the Australian government, is equipped with 24 electrodes with a small wire that extends from the back of the eye to a receptor attached behind the ear.

Robots that can read and respond to brain waves will eventually help stroke patients regain movement, using new neural interfaces that can re-train damaged motor pathways. Neuroscientists have made great strides in brain-machine interfaces that can respond to a person’s thoughts — a new generation will drive a non-invasive robotic orthotic, retraining the patient’s own body.

Patients who have suffered a stroke or other injury can lose the active use of their limbs, rendering them unable to simply think about moving an arm or hand and then do it. Sometimes it’s possible to re-establish the lost connection, with time and repetitive physical therapy. Researchers at Rice University are using a robotic exoskeleton and a neural interface to improve matters.

Britain’s first bionic veteran has a new brain-controlled robotic arm that is transforming his life.

Andrew Garthwaite, 25, had his right arm blown clean off by a rocket-propelled grenade during a firefight with the Taliban in Afghanistan in September 2010. In January he had the state-of-the-art limb wired to his nervous system during a six-hour operation in Vienna, Austria.

Now he is getting to grips with his new body part and is able to ride his motorcycle and drive a car again. Mr Gathwaite, who lives with his new wife Kailey, also 25, in South Shields, Tyneside, said:

'It's been incredible. I thought I might never be the same. But my life is starting to get back to normal - I'm on my motorbike and I'm back in a car. I can do things that I never thought I would have been able to do'.

Harvard scientists have created a type of cyborg tissue by embedding a three-dimensional network of functional, biocompatible, nanoscale wires into engineered human tissues.

The research addresses a concern that has long been associated with work on bioengineered tissue: how to create systems capable of sensing chemical or electrical changes in the tissue after it has been grown and implanted. The system might also represent a solution to researchers’ struggles in developing methods to directly stimulate engineered tissues and measure cellular reactions.

The process of building the networks is similar to that used to etch microchips. Beginning with a two-dimensional substrate, researchers laid out a mesh of organic polymer around nanoscale wires, which serve as the critical sensing elements. Nanoscale electrodes, which connect the nanowire elements, were then built within the mesh to enable nanowire transistors to measure the activity in cells without damaging them. Once completed, the substrate is then dissolved, leaving researchers with a netlike sponge, or a mesh, that can be folded or rolled into a host of three-dimensional shapes. Finally, the networks are porous enough to allow seeding them with cells and encourage those cells to grow in 3-D cultures.

Using heart and nerve cells, the Harvard research team successfully engineered tissues containing embedded nanoscale networks without affecting the cells’ viability or activity. Using the embedded devices, the researchers were then able to detect electrical signals generated by cells deep within the tissue, and to measure changes in those signals in response to cardio- or neuro-stimulating drugs.

A typical five-month-old infant has hardly figured out how to sit up yet — even crawling may be months away — but there are a few babies who already know how to drive. They’re steering their very own mobile robots. 

The robots are designed to allow babies with disabilities to move around independently, at the same age their peers might learn to crawl.  Whether they use robots or their own limbs, starting to move may be an important part of baby brain development, some childhood specialists think. Researchers don’t want kids with cerebral palsy or other movement disorders to miss out. 

"We think that babies with disabilities are missing an opportunity for learning that typically developing babies have," said Carole Dennis, a professor occupational therapy at Ithaca College in New York.

Robots are everywhere. But for them to be useful, they have to be programmed by people. Computer scientists are now looking for ways to teach robots how to teach themselves.

NICO spends a lot of time looking in the mirror. But it’s not mere vanity - Nico is a humanoid robot that can recognise its reflection - a step on the path towards true self-awareness.

Nico is the centrepiece of a unique experiment to see whether a robot can tackle a classic test of self-awareness called the mirror test. What does it take to pass the test? An animal (usually) has to recognise that a mark on the body it sees in the mirror is in fact on its own body. Only dolphins, orcas, elephants, magpies, humans and a few other apes have passed the test so far.

(Image: Justin Hart/Yale University)