Machine man alive at festival (From Stroud News and Journal)

Machine man alive at festival

CYBORGS will be escaping the lab to live among the people of Cheltenham this week, when the Cheltenham Festival of Science opens its doors for the fourth time today (Wednesday).

They can feel magnetism, touch remotely and sense objects hidden behind walls, but they aren't comic book heroes - simply human volunteers at the Cheltenham Science Festival who will learn to use devices that give them new sensory powers, transforming them from humans into cyborgs.

The human/machine hybrids include Retroman, who will have eyes in the back of his head, and Magnetoman, who will be able to sense magnetic fields and the presence of metal objects.

The real question is whether the volunteer cyborgs will gain mastery of the electronics over the week and begin to use their new senses as naturally as sight and hearing.

Examining these questions and many more will be artificial life researchers from the Centre for Computational Neuroscience & Robotics and engineer/sonic artist Sarah Angliss, who will be investigating the implications for medicine, entertainment and the study of human and machine intelligence during this week-long study.

The devices the scientists will use are cunningly simple, hacked together from mobile phone vibrators, burglar-alarm spares, metal detectors and so on. But in theory, these are all one would need to transform a 'naked' human into an animal/machine hybrid with an entirely new experience of the world.

During the week, visitors to the Science Festival can try out some cyborg experiments for themselves in the Discovery Zone, talk about the experiment with the team from Sussex and look out for our trainee cyborgs in action.

The results will be announced in Cheltenham Town Hall on Friday, June 10 at 6pm. Tickets and more information are available from the box office.