Human augmentation is usually portrayed as cutting-edge, far-fetched technology, but the reality is that there are numerous types of human augmentation available today. Augmentation can improve our health, enjoyment, productivity, and overall quality of life provided it is done appropriately.
Human augmentation is defined as technologies that improve human productivity or capability, or that add to the human body in some way. To put it another way, technology must be a consistent and intuitive component of the human experience on a moment-by-moment basis to be regarded as an augmentation under our definition.
Types of Human Augmentation
There are three main categories of Human Augmentation:
- Replacing Human Ability:
Replication refers to human augmentations that restore or duplicate typical human skills. It includes people’s prosthetic limbs, deaf people’s hearing aids, and mute people’s voice synthesizers. Replication aids in facilitating equal possibilities for people who have experienced a traumatic accident or illness, as well as those who were born with inadequacies and suffer challenges in meeting their necessities. The instruments used in this study provide considerable psychological support to their users.
- Supplementing Human Ability:
Human Augmentations enhance our ability in doing things that fall under the category of supplementation. For example, these could be devices that artificially boost one’s strength, improve one’s vision, and push one beyond their natural limits, or enhance one’s intelligence. Human augmentation technology has allowed us to strengthen human abilities (physical and mental) that have given us the potential to transform our civilization and as well as bolster our prospects.
- Exceeding Human Ability:
Exceeding augmentation refers to human enhancement technology that allows us to do any phenomenon that we are physically incapable of performing on our own. Consider conventional superhero abilities such as the power to fly, the ability to breathe underwater, the ability to detect compounds through the nose that are not detectable by the usual olfactory sense, and so on.
Examples of Human Augmentation
- Skylight
Skylight is an Upskill platform that has partnered with Google to build smart glasses for aviation engineers. The glasses aid in tightening B-nuts, which are an important component of jet engines. To prevent the engine from failing, these must be properly tightened.
- Teslasuit
The Teslasuit is a wearable haptic technology that can track the wearer’s movement, manage their temperature, and provide haptic input. While this technology is currently being employed for VR immersion, the concepts that went into its creation can readily be used to augment.
- HoloLens 2
HoloLens 2 is an untethered mixed reality device featuring collaboration-enhancing apps and solutions. The user can perceive and manipulate objects in holographic form using this gadget. Gaming, staff training, 3D computer-aided design, and design collaboration are just a few of the industrial and commercial applications for the gadget.
- SolarEar
SolarEar is a solar-powered hearing aid with a low price tag. It provides an economical alternative to standard hearing aids for the hard of hearing and near-deaf, bringing the technology to countries and places that previously couldn’t afford them.
- eSight
The eSight gadget, which looks like glasses and allows legally blind people to view their surroundings, is wearable technology. The device has front-facing cameras that capture the environment in near-eye quality and display it on a screen in front of the user’s eyes.
