Japan's HAL exoskeleton is joined by the ReWalk system - a partial exoskelton designed to allow users with mobility issues to walk with the help of crutches.

Berkeley's Lower Extremity Exoskeleton (BLEEX) is designed to assist soldiers, firefighters, or rescue personnel by supporting heavy equipment with the exoskeleton instead of the wearer's back. The 100-pound BLEEX rig plus a 70-pound backpack feel like a 5-pound load to the wearer.

Berkeley Bionics demonstrates the latest version, which is easier to move in than without.

Amputees can look forward to advances like the K3 Promoter, a prosthetic foot with tensioned steel cables designed to mimic the action of tendons and ligaments, or Dean Kamen's "Luke" arm. The following video shows the arm in action as its creators discuss its engineering versatility.

When a prothesis cannot be completely controlled via the user's nervous impulses — or a completely robotic arm with human-like control is desired — a biomimetic arm may serve. SENOPAC's robot hand combines a sensory "skin" with a controller inspired by the human cerebellum, capable of a quick snap of its fingers or the delicate handling of a chicken's egg.

SENOPAC's biomimetic arm — 'cause evolution is hard to beat.

Intel's working on a robotic hand that can feel objects before it touches them — relying on electrolocation to give the hand a "Pre Touch" sense.

The rest of the body has much to look forward to. Patients experiencing renal failure typically require dialysis — their kidneys are no longer able to filter wastes from the blood, allowing them to build up and throwing off the body's ability to regulate waste, acid, electrolytes — you name it. Dialysis artificially filters dangerous levels of wastes out of the blood, but it is an expensive, time-consuming procedure during which the patient is effectively bedridden. AWAK, the automated, wearable artificial kidney, would replace dialysis with a wearable device that operates continuously. It's not quite implantable, but a kidney that you wear is potentially much better than a kidney that you rent time on three times a week.

AWAK - "dialysis on the go".

In an attempt to make mind-machine interfaces work more smoothly, this micro-mechanical electrosensory robot wouldn't rely on the usual surgical technique for implanting electrodes in the brain, which is "stick an electrode into the brain and hope it ends up somewhere useful". This device is designed to make minute adjustments automatically to individual electrodes, nestling them firmly in the signaling "sweet spot" — and, if necessary, keeping them there as the architecture of the brain changes. It'll zero in on neurons using software similar to airplane-tracking software currently in use by the U.S. military.

A better brain-computer interface?

Advances such as these could serve to improve devices such as Neuro_Pace, an implant which detects oncoming seizures and short-circuits them, or the brain-controlled robotic arm that even a monkey can use:

Oh, and that artificial retina we mentioned last time? Now there's a wireless version. No word yet on what sort of security the wireless signal has. I rather like the idea of a future where you can wander around searching for public point-of-view feeds, though heaven only knows what the marketing people would do with that data.

As a disabled person whose body is basically falling apart (details too gross to go into), I've been wondering for a long time when I can get my cyborg transformation underway. What's the status of materials that are compatible with being implanted in the body?

The use of the term "cybernetic" hints at where the difficulty lies - traditionally, cybernetics is the study of the interactions within complex systems with an emphasis on feedback and control. The body is a terrifically complex system, which can be maddening to meddle with - surprisingly forgiving in some respects, infuriatingly recalcitrant in others.

Full disclosure - I'm a cyborg. I wear corrective lenses and shoes that modify my feet appropriately for an urban environment. It's not exactly Robocop, true, but according to the loosest definition, most of us already have a complicated relationship with technology blurring the line between "me" and "stuff." It's not a relationship that's going to get simpler. The relatively simple implants and prosthetics of today will soon give way to devices that interface more completely and naturally with the body. We have a number of biocompatible materials available to us already, from titanium to various polymers. They aren't perfect by any means, but the body can be surprisingly accommodating.

Sometimes you can avoid implantation altogether with an exoskeletal assist. A weakened body can recover some of its strength via an exoskeleton that senses an intended motion of the wearer and reinforces it.

Stark Enterprises and Apple present: the Iron Man.

For organs no longer present, there are robotic limbs that obey commands given by the mind. The bionic limb below senses commands from the wearer and (with a lot of practice) obeys. Obviously the connection between nerve and the robot limb is unusual, but the brain is pretty good at making unfamiliar signals familiar with use.

"They tell you to try and think as if you have two hands."

Even entire arms can be replaced, by rerouting the motor nerves that control the arm to the chest where they can be read by the robotic arm's shoulder mount.

A not-so-phantom limb.

Having a cybernetic limb sounds great until you consider how much you depend upon your sense of touch. Walking with a leg that's asleep is no mean feat, and have you ever tried to eat a meal fresh from the dentist before the novocane wears off? Sure, your shiny robot hand is sturdy, but the wineglass you want to pick up with it isn't - and just because the hand won't be damaged by that hot stove doesn't mean the flesh attached to your extremely conductive prosthesis won't be. The first thing they did after fitting Luke Skywalker with a replacement was test to see that he could feel with it.

"I will become a jedi, bite off more than I can chew, and get my hand lopped off...like my father before me."

When the sensory nerves connecting the brain to the missing limb are also rerouted to the chest, a touch on the patient's chest can feel like someone's brushing against fingers that are no longer there, or stretching skin that no longer exists. While the recovered sensations are currently somewhat random, further research into the phenomena along with a robot arm including sensors that feed back to the sensory nerves in the chest could give us cybernetic replacements capable of being tickled.

Astounding as these interfaces are, the devices themselves are still wearable - that is to say, removable. We won't neglect the truly implantable devices. For example, Matt Nagel, though quadriplegic, can use the 96 electrodes implanted into his motor cortex to move a cursor on a computer screen or command a robot arm by thought alone.

Matt Nagel wills his computer into action.

The senses have not been neglected, either. Though the resolution of existing bionic eye implants is as of yet only in the tens of pixels, these devices allow the wearers enough vision to dramatically improve their quality of life. No word yet on whether they'll come in mirrorshades.

A bionic retinal implant.

Finally, there is the cochlear implant, used regularly by over 100,000 people worldwide to directly stimulate the auditory nerves of the deaf or extremely hard of hearing. These have been around since the late '70s, but only recently has the technology become advanced and popular enough to encourage users to hack their own implants.

You'll know that the human-machine interface has truly arrived when the first thing you do post-implantation is replace the standard firmware with an open-source alternative.

Terry Johnson is a biology researcher at UC Berkeley and io9's resident biogeek. If you have a question you'd like Terry to answer, email him at: tdj@io9.com.

Herr says we're less than ten years away from the leg-swapping scenario, and even closer to bions that directly sample the signals our brains send to our limbs to move them. Check out his awesome video here, or read below for the coolest snippets:

Probably two years from now, I will have a device implanted into my body called bions that measure the extent that my spinal cord has activated the muscles in my biological leg. Those signals will be sent out to a robotic artificial ankle system. I will be able to think and move my ankle...[Herr lost his lower legs to frostbite when he was 15]

I believe in the next decade we will have artificial legs that are better than human legs for running. The best amputee runner for the 100-dash is only a second slower than the world record with biological legs, and that's just with carbon composite, dumb passive springs...

We'll see this gradual merging of the human and technology and what will come out of that is a hybrid human that's actually better, using certain metrics. As tissue engineering technologies progress, we can imagine eventually replacing certain components of the prosthesis with biological materials.

It'll be a future where, when we architect a machine we'll ask 'for this component, should we use skin or should we use steel or a composite? what should we use? Inevitably I believe we'll end up with hybrid devices because it won't always be optimal to use synthetic components, nor will it always be optimal to use biological components.

Sources: Technovelgy, MIT

Image: IGN.com

Part of the challenge, says Eick, was "we only had the rights to the show's title and the character's name, but, legally, we couldn't depict mechanistic technology that involved parts being placed on the body."

I'm guessing this is the same legal circle jerk (involving the novel which the 1970s show was based on) which prevents a DVD release of the Lindsay Wagner series. In other words, Bionic Woman is reflecting our real-life universe: intellectual property keeps us from reaping the benefits of assistive technologies. Private ownership won't even let us imagine some possible futures. As a result, we don't have a cyborg with sturdy machine limbs, we have a much flimsier superhero. Image by Win McNamee for Getty Images.

Not Your Father's 'Bionic Woman' [Associated Press]

Famous names: Lee Majors, Richard Anderson, Martin E. Brooks, Harve Bennett

Crunchy goodness: 2

Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: Lindsay Wagner appeared in a series of episodes of season two as Jaime Sommers, who goes skydiving with Steve and becomes horribly injured. She gets her own bionic limbs and Steve decides to marry her, the only woman who can keep up with him. But then her body rejects her implants and she dies of a blood clot... only to come back to "life" shortly afterwards with no memory of her romance with Steve. Wagner went on to star in her own show, The Bionic Woman.

Change of pace: The show started as a series of TV movies, produced by Battlestar Galactica creator Glen A. Larson, which portrayed Steve as a snarky, reluctant superspy. But the actual series, produced by StarTrek II: Wrath Of Khan producer Bennett, was less James Bond-y and more friendly.

Memorable product tie-in: The classic Steve Austin action figure, wearing his red astronaut jumpsuit and featuring a big hole in the back of his head so you can look through his "bionic eye." The bionic right arm, controlled by a button in his back,could lift objects weighing up to two pounds.

The Six Million Dollar Man: Episode Guide