Biorobotics
From Freepedia
Biorobotics is a term that loosely covers the fields of cybernetics, bionics and even genetic engineering as a collective study.
Biorobotics is often used to refer a real subfeild of robotics: studying how to make robots that emulate or simulate living biological organisms mechanically and even chemically. The term is also used in a reverse definition: making biological organisms as manipulatable and functional as robots.
In the later sense biorobotics is referred to as a theoretical discipline of comprehensive genetic engineering in which organisms are created and designed by artificial means. The creation of life from non-living matter for example, is biorobotics. Because of its mostly theoretical status it is presently limited to science fiction, the actually field is in its infancy as synthetic biology and Bionanotechnology.
The Replicants in the movie Blade Runner would be considered biorobotic in nature: (synthetic) organisms of living tissue and cells yet created artificially. Instead of microchips, their brain would be based on ganglions/artificial neurons.
In the 1988 adventure game Snatcher the term Bioroid was coined to represent a synthetic human like the replicates in blade runner. A small group of cyberpunk and mecha anime, manga and Role playing games have also used the term, sometimes more generally for a partially or fully biological robot or for a breed of genetically engineered human slaves.
