Lifeboat Foundation

When you’re a software and hardware engineer sometimes you need a little challenge. Engineer Robert Lucian Chiriac’s latest Raspberry Pi creation can detect license plates and read the characters with fairly decent accuracy. This is an involved project that relies on machine learning to properly interpret images from the camera into discernible text.

The primary license plate reading function is constructed using three separate applications (there are more used throughout the project, but these three are critical). Chiriac used the YOLOv3 object detection algorithm to create a bounding box around each license plate it detects from the camera input. The image within the bounding box is sent to CRAFT, a text detecting application. Once the location for each character in the plate has been identified, the information is passed along to CRNN to predict the actual text.

Chiriac mounted the Raspberry Pi, GPS module, 4G module and Pi camera to his car’s rear-view mirror with a 3D-printed unit he designed. The Pi camera is even adjustable with a ball-joint swivel mount.

World’s Largest 3D Printer re: Philip K. Dick on 3/1/2020: Science Fiction in the News.

Topline: A group of 300-plus engineers, designers, tech founders and others galvanized on Facebook with a goal of building a ventilator using readily available materials, 3D printing and open-source hardware resources. In just seven days, they built a prototype that will be validated as a solution to the global ventilator shortage by Irish authorities as early as next week.

Dreams of human immortality may remain so, but extending our lives beyond 100, even 150 years, can soon become a reality. ‘The Future is Now’ explores ground-breaking technology that might help us to slow down the ageing process and overcome our physical limitations.

3D-printing of brand new human organs, controlling bionic prosthetics with your mind, or invading your body with disease-fighting microrobots. Hosts Kate and Talish bring you the latest developments in biomedical engineering.

Continue reading “The Future is Now. Biomedical advances that will change the human body” »

But using porous TCP to print bones does have some drawbacks. Its compressive strength is much lower than that of some human load-bearing bones, such as our thighbones. Compressive strength would rise over time, but it could be years before it would match pre-operation strength levels.

3D Printing Bones for Mars?

Several other groups are working on similar approaches. At NYU School of Medicine and NYU Langone Health, scientists have been developing 3D printed scaffold implants that could help patient groups such as children with skull deform ities. Early research results show that up to 77 percent of the bone scaffolding had been absorbed and replaced by natural bone 6 months after surgery, and that the newly-grown bone was just as strong as the original.

Researchers can print cells and biomaterials that make up human tissues, but there’s still a long way to go before fully functional organs can be made to order.

What can 3D printing do for medicine? The “sky is the limit,” says Northwell Health researcher Dr. Todd Goldstein.

A Perth company has revealed plans to roll out high-tech 3D-printed hemp homes, promising to transform residential building as we know it.

Swarming 3D printed smarticles unlock new method of robot locomotion and may be able to form load-bearing structures

An accidental discovery about construction staples led to the development of the swarming robots. Nick Gravish, a doctoral student at Georgia Tech working on a project with the Army Research Laboratory, found that if these heavy duty staples were poured into a box with removable sides, they would self-assemble into tower structures that will stay standing even if the box was disassembled. This, he realised, meant that entangling simple structures could lead to the formation of a composite structure with mechanical properties well beyond those of the original structures.