World’s first bionic man Frank

Remember that robo girl from the hit tele series “Small Wonder”? Well, the concept has finally materialized with the invention of what is now being hailed as the, “World’s first bionic man”, named, Frank, which is a nick, derived from the word ‘Frankenstein’.

Frank is not your day-to-day robot like ASIMO by Sony, etc, but it is, in literal terms, a perfect example of human meeting a machine. It is made up of 28 artificial and several other synthetic organs, which are similar to those found in you and me, including a beating heart! Yes, it’s that real!

Built by the engineers at Shadow Robot Co in England, ‘Frank’ is the baby of Dr Bertolt Meyer’s mind, who himself has an embedded bionic arm, and is a professor at the University of Zurich. The artificial organs in this real life technological miracle were contributed by several laboratories from across the globe. On the technical front, Frank has more than 200 processors working for it to facilitate various activities like walking and talking. To give it a more real feel, the engineers have put in more than 1000 sensors beneath the robo’s skin, to ensure that the “touch” and “temperature changes” sensations are felt by it, and accordingly responded to.

Frank is by far the most realistic humanoid that has been made, as it has organs, limbs, eyes, etc just like us. Building this machine burnt a hole of about 1 million dollars in the pocket of investors.

Although we cannot ignore the fact that Frank’s walking speed is quite a competitor to that of a snail’s, but it is surely a huge step in the field of bionics.