It's not fake. He's real...and he's the first! Frank, the 'bionic man' is 6 feet and weighs 170 lbs. His face is made of synthetic parts and modeled after Bertolt Meyer, a social psychologists from the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Meyer thought it was awkward when he first saw his replica. Meyer will also be hosting the documentary created to show the making of Frank and shed insight on the bionic man.
Frank's voice is similar to Siri on an Apple iPhone, and his personality is programmed to mimic a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy. This robot cost a whopping $1 million. Not bad at all, in comparison to many expensive projects that scientists attempt which eats up taxpayers' money. Frank has over 2/3rd of the human body. He has an artificial heart, a programmed, legs, pancreas, head, see-through chest, and some body parts you probably didn't know existed. These artificial organs were actually donated from laboratories around the world. So, it's a joint effort of several global scientists.
Frank, however, does not have a liver, stomach, and intestines because they are too complicated to generate in a lab. Frank's assembly took 3 months and was directed by roboticists Rich Walker and Matthew Godden of Shadow Robot Co. in England. This is a ground-breaking scientific development. Scientist and roboticists never cease to amaze me.
I don't know if Frank is worth the cost of a flight to Washington. Nevertheless, I'm willing to check out the documentary premiering on October 20. I'm interested in knowing how these scientists replicated Frank's prosthetic body parts.
The creation of this bionic man raises some ethical questions: "Does creating something so life-like threaten notions of what it means to be human? What amount of body enhancement should be allowed or acceptable? And is it wrong that only some people have access to these life-extending technologies?
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