Everyday world practice regularly shows us that human life is an incredibly fragile phenomenon that can be damaged by external or internal factors. It is enough to look at the human body in detail to understand that, although it is a rather complicated technical mechanism it has too many nuances that can lead to human suffering. This includes the imperfection of the joint connection of bones, which, because of their fragility, can lead to severe fractures, and the age or hereditary deterioration of vision, and the limited physical capacity of human beings. All this leads to the search for alternative solutions to maintain the patient’s normal functioning, which is the primary goal of biomechatronic science.
It is worth noting that modern medicine is the integration of different scientific directions, and consequently, even the unique problems of patients with health can find a solution at the intersection of several theoretical and applied branches. Biomechatronics is an excellent example of how knowledge in fundamental medicine, engineering, and biophysics is used to help people with physical injuries. (Awrejcewicz et al., 2016). Since the clinical practice becomes more accessible to the general public over time, biomechatronics can help to create the conditions for functional activity in people with limb impairments, psychomotor disabilities, and poor eyesight. This becomes especially important for people who have entirely lost body parts due to war, traffic accidents, or other disasters.
Knowing that a person who has lost all their limbs as a result of an accident will one day be able to walk and write again has become a decisive factor for me in why I want to study biomechatronics. In other words, I am sure that our world does not always turn out to be fair, and as a consequence, people become victims of disasters or diseases. There is no justice in the fact that genetic and infectious diseases often cause a person to have their limbs amputated or lose eyesight for the rest of their life. Further development of biomechatronics research is needed to help such people to feel healthy and functional again.
Looking at modern technological solutions in the field of prosthetics, it is essential to recognize that humankind has already significantly developed the skills to create artificial body parts. With the help of bioprostheses, people who have lost their hands can carry objects, eat on their own, or write texts. Moreover, the most innovative products allow patients to feel the morphology of surfaces and temperature of objects, which is a key factor in creating the most realistic sensations. However, these technologies are still conceptual and available only to a narrow category of clients. This fact justifies my choice of biomechatronics: I plan to study this area as deeply as possible to improve the available technologies. Despite the apparent success, this is a rather young science, which still knows little about universal ways of contact of electronic and mechanical elements with living structures of a patient, mechanisms of control of electronics using conscious activity, and full return of eyesight to absolutely blind people. Finally, biomechatronics has many applied tasks, such as creating the construction for the confident walking of a wheelchair user, developing fully functional artificial internal organs, and integrating human consciousness and program code (Bradley et al., 2020). In general, these are issues that biomechatronics will have to address in the coming decades, I want to be a direct participant in discoveries that will improve the quality of life for people with physical disabilities.
References
Awrejcewicz, J., Kaliński, K. J., Szewczyk, R., & Kaliczyńska, M. (Eds.). (2016). Mechatronics: Ideas, challenges, solutions and applications. Springer.
Bradley, D., Russell, D., Hehenberger, P., Azorin-Lopez, J., Watt, S., & Milne, C. (2020). From mechatronics to the cloud. In Yan, X.T., Bradley, D., Russell, D., & Moore, P. (Eds.), Reinventing Mechatronics (pp. 17-33). Springer.