This is the seventh in a series on the impact of the coronavirus on China’s technology sector.
China’s robotics market is forecast to reach US$103.6 billion by 2023, driven by manufacturing, consumer, retail, health care and resource applications.
Chinese robotics companies have seen a surge in demand since the coronavirus outbreak but some believe robot tech is not mature enough for widespread use.
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Existing electronic skin (e-skin) sensing platforms are equipped to monitor physical parameters using power from batteries or near-field communication. For e-skins to be applied in the next generation of robotics and medical devices, they must operate wirelessly and be self-powered. However, despite recent efforts to harvest energy from the human body, self-powered e-skin with the ability to perform biosensing with Bluetooth communication are limited because of the lack of a continuous energy source and limited power efficiency. Here, we report a flexible and fully perspiration-powered integrated electronic skin (PPES) for multiplexed metabolic sensing in situ. The battery-free e-skin contains multimodal sensors and highly efficient lactate biofuel cells that use a unique integration of zero- to three-dimensional nanomaterials to achieve high power intensity and long-term stability. The PPES delivered a record-breaking power density of 3.5 milliwatt·centimeter−2 for biofuel cells in untreated human body fluids (human sweat) and displayed a very stable performance during a 60-hour continuous operation. It selectively monitored key metabolic analytes (e.g., urea, NH4+, glucose, and pH) and the skin temperature during prolonged physical activities and wirelessly transmitted the data to the user interface using Bluetooth. The PPES was also able to monitor muscle contraction and work as a human-machine interface for human-prosthesis walking.
Recent advances in robotics have enabled soft electronic devices at different scales with excellent biocompatibility and mechanical properties; these advances have rendered novel robotic functionalities suitable for various medical applications, such as diagnosis and drug delivery, soft surgery tools, human-machine interaction (HMI), wearable computing, health monitoring, assistive robotics, and prosthesis (1–6). Electronic skin (e-skin) can have similar characteristics to human skin, such as mechanical durability and stretchability and the ability to measure various sensations such as temperature and pressure (7–11). Moreover, e-skin can be augmented with capabilities beyond those of the normal human skin by incorporating advanced bioelectronics materials and devices.
(Reuters) — With much of the world living in lockdown, the spread of the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, that was first detected in China late last year is beginning to slow in some places. As of April 23, 2.7 million had been infected and 192,000 killed by COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
While a safe, effective vaccine is still more than a year away, researchers are rushing to repurpose existing drugs and non-drug therapies as well as testing promising experimental drugs that were already in clinical trials.
Preliminary results from a clinical trial of remdesivir, an experimental antiviral drug being tested for coronavirus, could come in as little as one to two weeks, a top researcher said Sunday.
The final results aren’t expected until mid-to-late May, said Dr. Andre Kalil, a principal investigator for the trial. But he said “we can potentially have some early data in the next one or two weeks,” contingent on a preliminary analysis.
“In the next few weeks, we’re going to do the analysis, and we’re going to basically know if remdesivir is better or not than placebo,” he told CNN.
Paralysis used to mean a life sentence of immobility with no way out—until now.
Back in 2010, Ian Burkhart suffered a devastating injury that would leave him mostly paralyzed. Even though he was still able to move his shoulders and elbows, he had lost sensation in his hands. That was until Patrick Ganzer at Battelle Memorial Institute fast-forwarded biotech into the future by developing a brain implant that would turn Burkhart’s life around. When the implant connects to a specialized brain-computer interface, it does something that has never been done before and has restored both movement and touch in his right hand.
