Lifeboat Foundation

The world’s first flexible, transparent augmented reality (AR) display screen using 3D printing and low-cost materials has been created by researchers at the University of Melbourne, KDH Design Corporation and the Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication (MCN). The development of the new display screen is set to advance how AR is used across a wide range of industries and applications.

AR technology overlays digital content onto the real world, enhancing the user’s real-time perception and interaction with their environment. Until now, creating flexible AR technology that can adjust to different angles of light sources has been a challenge, as current mainstream AR manufacturing uses glass substrates, which must undergo photomasking, lamination, cutting, or etching microstructure patterns. These time-consuming processes are expensive, have a poor yield rate and are difficult to seamlessly integrate with product appearance designs.

Led by University of Melbourne researchers Associate Professor Ranjith Unnithan, Professor Christina Lim and Professor Thas Nirmalathas, in collaboration with Taiwanese KDH Design Corporation, the team has successfully developed a transparent AR display screen using low-cost, optical-quality polymer and plastic—a first-of-its-kind achievement in the field of AR displays.

In the three-dimensional printing process of ceramic with low-angle structures, additional supporting structures are usually employed to avoid collapse of overhanging parts. However, the extra supporting structures not only affect printing efficiency, but the problems caused by their removal are also a matter of concern. Herein, we present a ceramic printing method, which can realize printing of unsupported multi-scale and large-span ceramics through the combination of direct ink writing and near-infrared induced up-conversion particles-assisted photopolymerization. This printing technology enables in-situ curing of multi-scale filaments with diameters ranging from 410 µm to 3.50 mm, and ceramic structures of torsion spring, three-dimensional bending and cantilever beam were successfully constructed through unsupported printing. This method will bring more innovation to the unsupported 3D manufacturing of complex shape ceramics.

In 3D ceramic printing, the need for additional supports can increase processing time and introduce defects during post-processing removal. Here, authors merge direct ink writing and up-conversion particles-assisted photopolymerization under near-infrared irradiation for support-free printing with controlled curing rates reducing material waste, printing time, and post-processing steps.

How to build VR Haptic gloves to feel in VR, for really cheap.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to build your own budget VR Haptic Gloves! (Prototype 4)

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A lightweight, customized mouse delivering maximum comfort and peak performance that fits snugly into your palm and your palm alone.

In this day and age, where we spend hours hunched over a computer, there is a case for everything being ergonomic.

Into this niche steps Formify, a team based out of Toronto with the belief that individualized design should be accessible to everyone.

The plan: Ding could play a key role in helping China get its future lunar bases off the ground — his research team at HUST has designed several potential moon bases and developed technology that could be used to actually construct them on the moon.

One of those is the “Chinese Super Mason,” an autonomous robot designed to create structures out of bricks. Another is the bricks themselves — Ding’s team has come up with a LEGO-like design for the blocks, which it proposes to make using 3D printing, lasers, and lunar regolith.

They could get a chance to see their ideas put to the ultimate test as soon as 2028, as China reportedly plans to send a Super Mason to the moon to build a lunar brick as part of the Chang’e 8 mission, which is expected to launch in 2028.

Finding ways to integrate electronics into living tissue could be crucial for everything from brain implants to new medical technologies. A new approach has shown that it’s possible to 3D print circuits into living worms.

There has been growing interest in finding ways to more closely integrate technology with the human body, in particular when it comes to interfacing electronics with the nervous system. This will be crucial for future brain-machine interfaces and could also be used to treat a host of neurological conditions.

But for the most part, it’s proven difficult to make these kinds of connections in ways that are non-invasive, long-lasting, and effective. The rigid nature of standard electronics means they don’t mix well with the squishy world of biology, and getting them inside the body in the first place can require risky surgical procedures.

A camel cannot go through the eye of a needle. But researchers at ETH Zurich have now achieved something that—figuratively speaking—comes quite close. They have developed a new approach to minimally invasive surgical instruments, allowing large objects to be brought into the body through a narrow catheter. Their demonstration study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

This works as follows: The researchers disassemble such devices into individual parts and then slide them through the catheter in a row, like a string of pearls. At the end of the catheter, the parts assemble themselves into a predefined shape thanks to built-in magnets.

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Technique may enable speedy, on-demand design of softer, safer neural devices.

An Australian team of scientists and engineers invent a tiny, flexible, and soft robotic arm to 3D print biomaterial inside a human body.

The F3DB is a proof-of-concept 3D bioprinter that can be inserted into the body to make repairs to damaged tissue.