;)
Democritus: Prof. Kevin Warwick at Cafe Scientifique in Sofia, Bulgaria (7 January):
It is a shame that at the moment I am just human, because as a human I am very limited. 
Not only physically. I cannot travel a hundred kilometers per hour without the help of technique.
I cannot fly without the help of drugs...;)
Mentally I am even more limited. My brain has 100 billion brain cells.
I have 5 senses. And I am missing out all sorts of signals because I am human.
I have to communicate in this old-fåshiîn way. These complex electro-chemical signals get translated to trivial mechanical signals – sound waves that are very slow, very air prone.
And when I turn up in somebody else’s ears and then into the brain, the person probably will not understand me at all, especially my wife…
Why not take the signals from here and transmit them directly?
Why not wire my brain directly to somebody else’s?
Can we communicate like that in a new way?
Can I have new senses?
Can I sense the world in infrared or x-ray or ultraviolet?
And if I can communicate directly brain to brain will I need an interpreter?
You will (Prof.Warwick points at the interpreter) be out of a job…
What is my research about?
It is trying to look into the future. Partly it involves robots.
This video is showing some of our robots. It is taken from the BBC’s program called "Inventions that changed the world".
There are two types of our robots we are going to see. 
The first one is a robot’s head. And the second one there is some little autonomous robots.
The robot’s head has
a vision and hearing,
sense of odour, but also
radar,
infrared and sonar, ultrasonic sensors.
And what we are trying to do is to link the senses together into the robot to try to understand more what happens in the human brain when our brain is linking different sensory information.
These autonomous robots communicate to each other. They all have ultrasonic signals and in that way they can detect objects.
What I was been asked there was ‘how intelligent are the robots?’
And really these robots have about 50 to 100 brain cells. So they are about as intelligent as a slug or a snail; or a Manchester United supporter...
The robots have a basic ability if the power is low to go and look for power. Like in McDonalds with robots really…
Implants
.This is in the last Millennium. The doctor is putting in the first implant that I had in 1998. This is a Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFDI). This is what it is look like closer. And on the left is the typical salary of a professor in the
And what the implant did was to identify me to the computer in my building. So the computer knew it was me. So when I walk towards the laboratory it opened the door and when coming through the front door it said
‘Hallow, prof.
Now it says ‘Hallow, Kevin!’ because we know each other.
Now there are about 7 000 people who have this type of implant. In
But in 1998 I was the first human.
Aha, the second implant.
This is a 2002. This implant was very different. It was positioned in my left arm. But it took 2 hours of neurosurgery to put it in place.
The 100 electrodes were fired into my nervous system, in my left arm. So this made a direct electrical connection between my nervous system and the computer and then onto the internet.
Some of the things I could do: This is my wife Irena. She is wearing some nice peace of jewelry that changes color from blue to red. And it was connected to my nervous system.
So when I held her hand tightly the jewelry was red and when I released her hand – the jewelry turned to blue.
Also when you are excited it is easy to distinguish signals on the nervous system. So when I was calm the jewelry was blue, and when I was excited it was flashed red.
Irena works in a different office to me. So she is walking in the office and the jewelry is blue – ‘No problem, he is not doing anything he should not!’
The jewelry starts flashing red – ‘What is he doing?’; and more importantly, ‘who is he doing it with?!’
It was not such a good idea…
I was in
But what we did was to link via the internet from
So my brain signals operated the robot hand on a different continent. When a hand gripped an object signal was sent back from the fingers to stimulate my brain in
As a cyborg, part human, part machine, your nervous system does not stop at the end of your body. It stops wherever the network or satellites will take it.
This is me with a baseball cap with ultrasonic sensors. The output from the ultrasonic sensors is stimulating my nervous system. So when an object came closer, so my brain was receiving more and more pulses of current. And with a blindfold on I could detect objects.
I did know what they were because I could not see them, but I could sense them like a bat ultrasonically. So if any of you thought having a sixth sense or extra sense is just science fiction, well, it is science fiction but is also science now.
For me the most exciting part of the experiment involved my wife again. And she had electrodes pushed into her nervous system from the inside.
You can try to push very thin wires into your nervous system. You will find that it is very painful. We went to the doctor to put the electrodes in. We thought he will get some anesthetic but he said “No” because he wanted to be sure that it made good contact.
So he pushed the electrode in.
‘Can you feel anything’
‘No’
He pushed in further. She screamed. And the doctor said ‘Oh, I think we have made a good contact’. Just to be sure he pushed another electrode in the same way. 
What we than did was to link our two nervous systems together electronically. Virtually we wired them together via the computer. What happened was when Irena moved her hand one – two – three times, her neuro signals stimulated my nervous system, my brain.
So, what we did was to communicate in a very basic way; like telegraphy, like Morse code, from nervous system to nervous system directly.
And I can see in the future with implants in the brain I will be able to do the same – to communicate directly from brain to brain.
And that is where my research is going now we are looking at brain–computer implants. Because in about 8 to 9 years what I would like to do is to link my brain directly with another person and communicate just by thinking to each other.
So for me the future is very exciting with the possibility of being a cyborg with extra abilities.
For some of you who are happy being humans I guess it is up to you. If you want to be part of some sub species in the future, it is your choice.
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