Biorobotics

Biorobotics is a term that loosely covers the fields of cybernetics, bionics and even genetic engineering as a collective study.

Biorobotics is often used to refer to the study of making robots that emulate or simulate living biological organisms mechanically and even chemically, it is also used in the reverse: making biological organisms as manipulatable and functional as robots.

In the later sense biorobotics is referred to as a theoretical discipline of comprehensive genetic engineering in which organisms are created and designed by artificial means. The creation of life from non-living matter for example, is biorobotics. Because of its mostly theoretical status it is presently limited to science fiction, the actually field is in its infancy as synthetic biology.

The Replicants in the movie Blade Runner would be considered biorobotic in nature: (synthetic) organisms of living tissue and cells yet created artificially. Instead of microchips, their brain would be based on ganglions/artificial neurons.

In the 1988 adventure_game Snatcher the term "Bioroid" was coined to represent a synthetic human like the replicates in blade runner. A small group of anime and role player games have also used the term, sometimes more generally for a partially or fully biological robot. In Transhuman_Space (a role-playing game) the term "bioroid" represents a breed of genetically engineered human slaves

See also

• Bionanotechnology
• Cyborg
• Nanobot
• Blade runner
• Replicant
• Fictional cyborgs
• Synthetic biology