A real-life million-dollar bionic man with artificial organs, synthetic blood and robotic limbs has been created to showcase what’s possible with modern science and hint at the future of prosthetics.
The artificial human, called Rex, stands 6.5-feet tall. All of its organs and body parts were built in labs at 18 universities and companies and assembled at Shadow Robot, a London company.
Rex is valued at nearly $1 million dollars, according to the researchers.
Rex’s head is modeled after Swiss psychologist Bertolt Meyer who uses a bionic hand. Meyer presents a documentary, “How to Build a Bionic Man,” scheduled to air Thursday on the United Kingdom’s Channel 4.
“I’ve looked around for new bionic technologies, out of personal interest, for a very long time and … until five to six years ago nothing much was happening. Then suddenly we get this explosion of innovation,” he told reporters at a news briefing today at London's Science Museum.
Artificial organs include a pancreas, kidney, spleen and trachea. While Rex looks eerily humanlike, he does lack human-level intelligence. An artificial intelligence program allows simple conversation, but he’s no Watson, IBM’s trivia-champ computer.
Rex will go on display at London’s Science Museum on Thursday and will be there until March 1. The artificial human will then travel to Washington D.C. for display at the Smithsonian Museum.
After the public gets a chance to see Rex in person, it will be returned to London for disassembly at Shadow Robot and the parts returned the suppliers.
John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.