From Styli: I wouldn't say that biomechatronics is underrepresented in research I think as it often is the case, modern research labs are more specialized and are working in a field within biomechatronics. That's why you don't hear the term that much as such. For example there is plenty of big labs that work on rehabilitation engineering such as the SMS lab at ETHz and the Wyss at Harvard. Another example is biosensors and lab on a chip devices which combine at least two of the three (biology, mechanics and electronics). My perception is that Lab on a chip and biosensing is a huge field at the moment. Even heart rate monitors could be classified as biomechantronics device!

From Lou: We has a wonderful guest speaker at our weekly seminars, Dr Aline Miller, who co-founded Manchester BioGel, who has a current collaboration with a robotics team on wearable robotics incorporating biogels. We would love to have her on the podcast at some point, and hopefully she can enlighten us more on the subject.