There is really no end to the march of invention, said Brevet Brigadier General John A.B.C. Smith, a character in Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 short story “The Man That Was Used Up.”
This early science fiction tale of a military man remade of manufactured parts — a 19th-century bionic man — is more than an interesting side note to America’s conflicted relationship with technology. By expressing the fear that we may lose our natural selves, and the idea that the conquest of the frontier transforms us into pieces of military machinery, Poe prefigured the anxieties many Americans feel about technological advances.
If you dream of electric sheep — or androids with imperial ambitions — it’s reassuring to hear UC Santa Cruz robotics researcher Jacob Rosen describing the inspiration for his work. “I had an adviser back in Israel who told me that everything you do should at least help one person,” said Rosen, a professor in the Jack Baskin School of Engineering.
Rosen and his fellow researchers at the UC Santa Cruz Bionics Lab are developing robotic systems that will help far more than a single individual. Their main areas of research are “exoskeletons” that help stroke victims recover the ability to control arm movement, and remote surgical robotics that will allow doctors to operate without actually being on the scene, as well as to work with robotic “partners” to speed up surgeries.
Last spring, the Silicon Valley Business Journal honored Rosen with its “Health Care Hero Award” for his robotics research. At the University of Washington, Rosen did postdoctoral research with pioneers in the field of remote surgery, including Richard Satava, a science fiction buff and professor who had served in Desert Storm. Satava envisioned a fully automated operating room called a trauma pod. This scenario is now close to becoming reality, thanks to collaboration between engineers like Rosen and surgeons like Satava. In a recent interview, Rosen explained why cross-disciplinary research is so crucial, but why it sometimes can be difficult.
