Ziya Goes to NextFest Aired on Wired Science - 10/31/2007 It's a combination world's fair, technology convention, and geek party: every year, Wired magazine hosts Nextfest, where innovators from around the world show off some of the best and most exciting ideas, gadgets and gizmos of the near future. Ziya Tong got a sneak preview at this year's version. Many of the innovations attempt to replicate or improve the human body. Zou Ren Ti of the Xi'an Chaoren Sculpture Research Institute, for instance, has created an android in his own image, a body double made of eerily lifelike silica gel that can speak and make simple gestures. Then there's the team from a Japanese university that is developing a kind of wheel-less wheelchair, a set of robot legs that can carry a disabled person over uneven terrain and even up stairs. Ziya also got a look at the hydraulically controlled artificial limbs that have enabled an American soldier to walk and run again after losing his legs in Iraq. They're a nice complement to a startlingly realistic, muscle-controlled prosthetic limb custom-built for a woman born without a left arm. For those who prefer to not move any limbs at all, a company called Brainloop has developed a system that allows a user wearing an electroencephalogram to navigate through a computer screen using only thoughts - something that could someday allow the disabled to use mental commands to control wheelchairs or home appliances. From: http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/story/58-ziya_goes_to_nextfest.html Video http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/video/191-ziya_goes_to_nextfest.html Wheel-less Wheelchair http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/video/145-wheel_less_wheelchair.html http://www.takanishi.mech.waseda.ac.jp/research/parallel/WL_16rr/index.htm New High-Tech Prosthesis http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/july-dec06/amputees_09-19.html http://heathcalhoun.com/ Brainloop http://www.aksioma.org/brainloop/index.html Xian Chaoren Sculpture Research Institute http://english.xsm.cn/