• Etterra@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    JFC just give it an LCD screen head that makes emojis and knock this uncanny valley shit off. I’d rather have Codsworth or R2D2 than this homunculus or some latex-faced simulacrum.

  • Gork@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    The least they can do is put googly eyes on it. C’mon, bare minimum effort lol.

  • Otter@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    This is both really cool, and really unsettling. I wonder if this research might help in the other direction as well, such as with transplants and grafts

    • DashboTreeFrog@discuss.online
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      5 months ago

      That was my first thought too; would this improve treatment for serious burn victims and such. Sounds like what they’ve made is better overall for sticking to applied surfaces and moving without tearing. Heck, maybe this could even lead to prosthetics that allow physical sensation

    • pavnilschanda@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      This was mentioned in the Discussion part of their paper:

      The activity of facial muscles involved in forming expressions such as smiles is closely linked to the development of wrinkles. One significant next step in this research is to leverage this model to enhance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying wrinkle formation. Moreover, applying this knowledge to recreate such expressions on a chip could find applications in the cosmetics industry and the orthopedic surgery industry. Additionally, this study performed actuation on a dermis equivalent by controlling mechanical actuators positioned beneath the dermis equivalent. Substituting this mechanical actuator with cultured muscle tissue presents an intriguing prospect in the realization of a higher degree of biomimetics. Examining the correlation between facial muscle contractions and resulting facial expression can offer insights into the physiological aspects of emotion, leading to new exploration in the treatment of diseases, such as facial paralysis surgery.

  • Gsus4@programming.dev
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    5 months ago

    …but…why? What is the point of living skin on machines? Even humans do everything they can to make their skin not look human :D

    • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      It would be cool if somebody missing an arm could get a cybernetic replacement that looks and feels real.

      That’s the only situation I can imagine where maintaining a living skin is worth the cost. I can’t even keep plants alive.

    • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy, but these are new. They look human - sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot.

    • OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      From the article

      Cultured skin, as they put it, can heal itself, carry biological sensors like our own to provide sensitive touch, and could also have benefits in medical or human interaction contexts.

      • Gsus4@programming.dev
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        5 months ago

        The self-repairable part is odd to me.You need to keep feeding, oxygenating it and to prevent infections, otherwise it will rot :S Besides, on humans the healing relies on blood for platelets and crusts to form and a whole immune system…it needs too much babysitting to be called “self-healing”.

        • Jarix@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          But it does heal. Efficiently be damned. That’s not what you care about with mad science. Results are all that matter in mad science, good results or bad results you just have an insatiable desire to see what happens if

    • weew@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      So they can use time machines that somehow only work for living matter

  • Qkall@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    If the Internet has taught me anything… I know someone out there took one look and said 'imma fuck this thing. ’

    • notabot@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Do you really want to know? There are some things that the human mind is not meant to contemplate.

      • 0x0@programming.dev
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        5 months ago

        The human mind is a curious mind.

        If that skin is just copy/pasted without nourishment it’ll rotten away, decaying in a sea of pus and putrid, gangrenic tissue, festering away as maggots feast on it.

        So if these scientists are half-serious about their grants then they should consider a way to feed the skin.

        • notabot@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          I was more suggesting that it might be a bit eldritch, but sometimes humor doesn’t come across quite right/

          The linked paper is focused on studying the ‘perforation-type anchor’ they use to hold the tissue to the mold as it grows, rather than keeping it alive afterwards. During growth the tissue and mold were submerged, or partially submerged, in a suitable medium to keep the cells healthy, and it was only when the resulting models were tested that they were removed (although one test did seem to involve letting it dry out to see if the anchors held). Growing the various layers of cells seems to be a solved problem, and I suspect that includes keeping them supplied with nutrients and such, so the authors aren’t examining that. What’s not solved is how to keep the tissue attached to a robot, which is what the authors were studying.