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‘Bionic Me’ At Science Center: Technology Meets The Human Body

  • "Bionic Me" lets visitors "race" para-Olympian Scott Reardon.

    Mark Mirko | mmirko@courant.com

    "Bionic Me" lets visitors "race" para-Olympian Scott Reardon.

  • A virtual reality jet pack is part of the "Bionic...

    Mark Mirko | mmirko@courant.com

    A virtual reality jet pack is part of the "Bionic Me" exhibit at the Connecticut Science Center.

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Most Americans had never heard the word bionic until the TV show “The Six Million Dollar Man” came on the air in 1974. But bionics was common decades before that, in ways that affected average people: glasses, braces, artificial limbs, hearing aids.

Bionics are even more common today: hip and knee replacements, cochlear implants, contact lenses, artificial skin, 3D-printed bones and other technologically fabricated bodily enhancements.

A new exhibit at the Connecticut Science Center, “Bionic Me,” won’t have people running at 60 mph like TV’s fictional bionic man Steve Austin or hearing a pin drop a mile away like his bionic cohort Jaime Sommers. Still, the exhibit, which opens Jan. 27, gives an engaging and informative overview of how technology is being used to help people circumvent their various physical limitations to live more fulfilling lives.

“Bionic Me” lets visitors “race” para-Olympian Scott Reardon.

“This will spark the interest of children and families because the entry point is the human body. Everybody has a body,” says John Bourdeaux, the vice president of advancement at the Science Center. “Technology and bionics and bodies are starting to interact more and more. Medicine and technology are moving forward in that direction.”

The exhibit originated at SciTech, an educational museum in Perth, Australia.

“Blade runner” prosthetic legs such as those used by elite Paralympian runners, mechanical hands and arms that operate by tracking and mimicking muscular movements and cochlear implants show how bionics can replicate the functions of body parts. Other bionic concepts accentuate human abilities without becoming part of a body: exoskeletons used for lifting heavy objects, and modeled after the natural exoskeletons of super-strong insects; night-vision eyewear; wearable pieces like Google Glass.

Some scientific advancements have crossover applications. Infrared technology is used by doctors to spot anomalies in a patient’s bodily functions, and by security staffs at airports to see if any passengers are sick. Technology that tracks micro-movements, which is used to improve the success of laser-eye surgery, originated as research to help International Space Station astronauts deal with weightlessness.

A virtual reality jet pack is part of the “Bionic Me” exhibit at the Connecticut Science Center.

Kids will have the most fun putting on the virtual-reality helmet to soar over a city and going into the wind tunnel wearing artificial wings to mimic the experience of flying like a bird.

“If a 7-year-old child goes in, they will immediately start experimenting with the wings,” Bourdeaux says. “Right away they start acting like little scientists.”

The exhibit also goes into a realm that science museums usually don’t: philosophy. One station asks users to agree or disagree with questions such as “I have the right to determine if my child has any genetic diseases,” or “I have the right to decide what color eyes and hair my baby is born with.” To add to the bionic theme, the cursor on that interactive element operates by eye-movement recognition.

“It all has an ethical component, like for example, if a cochlear implant can record everything you hear, do you have to have an indicator on your person?” Bourdeaux says. “We want to drive a lot of questions about what does this mean for us. You can be a scientist, but a scientist without an ethical compass is not something that we want.”

BIONIC ME is at Connecticut Science Center, 250 Columbus Blvd. in Hartford, from Jan. 27 until Dec. 31. ctsciencecenter.org.