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Category: cyborgs – Page 73

Hackers Breached Israeli Water Reservoir HMI System

Hackers with possible links to Iran appear to have breached an unprotected human-machine interface system at an Israeli water reservoir that connected directly to the internet and lacked security protocols, according to industrial cybersecurity firm Otorio.

See Also: Live Webinar | Securing Mobile Endpoints to Protect IP in the Pharma Industry

The security firm reports that the alleged Iranian hacking group, referred to as “Unidentified TEAM,” published a video of the attack on an unnamed reclaimed Israeli water reservoir human-machine interface (HMI) system, which did not require any authentication to access and modify the system. This allowed the threat actors to tamper with the water pressure, change temperatures and more.

Camouflage Skin Developed That Provides On-Demand Cloaking in Both Daylight and Night

Thermally controlled, active imperceptible artificial skin in visible-to-infrared range.

Cephalopods’ exceptional ability to hide into any background has inspired researchers to replicate their fascinating ability to camouflage in the infrared (IR) and visible spectrum. Recent advances offered a number of physical mechanisms to reproduce the cloaking functionalities of cephalopods. However, most of works focused on either camouflaging in the visible or IR camouflage range only: not dual modes in a single device structure that can readily switch between the visible and IR mode according to a suitable situation.

Recently, Prof. Seung hwan Ko’s group in Seoul National University in Republic of Korea demonstrated the visible-to-IR active ands camouflage skin that provides an on-demand cloaking platform both in daylight and at night with a single input variable: Temperature (T). The soft thermoelectric device that is capable of active cooling and heating serves as a backbone structure to fine-tune the surface of each pixel and thereby enables thermal camouflage in the IR range by matching the ambient temperature. The Ko’s group further extended the camouflage range to the IR-to-visible spectrum by incorporating thermochromic liquid crystal at the surface that changes light reflectance ® based on the device temperature, enabling the expressing a variety of colors by controling temperature. The camouflage system as a whole encompasses the two independent spectrums into a ‘full spectrum’ with a single soft structure by controlling temperature.

Energy-generating synthetic skin for affordable prosthetic limbs and touch-sensitive robots

A new type of energy-generating synthetic skin could create more affordable prosthetic limbs and robots capable of mimicking the sense of touch, scientists say.

In an early-view paper published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Robotics, researchers from the University of Glasgow describe how a wrapped in their flexible solar is capable of interacting with objects without using dedicated and expensive .

Instead, the skin puts the array of miniaturized integrated on its soft polymer surface to a clever dual use. The cells generate enough energy to power the micro-actuators which control the hand’s movements, but they also provide the hand with its unique sense of ‘touch’ by measuring the variations in the solar cells’ output.

Electronic skin has a strong future stretching ahead

A material that mimics human skin in strength, stretchability and sensitivity could be used to collect biological data in real time. Electronic skin, or e-skin, may play an important role in next-generation prosthetics, personalized medicine, soft robotics and artificial intelligence.

“The ideal e-skin will mimic the many natural functions of human skin, such as sensing temperature and touch, accurately and in real time,” says KAUST postdoc Yichen Cai. However, making suitably flexible electronics that can perform such delicate tasks while also enduring the bumps and scrapes of everyday life is challenging, and each material involved must be carefully engineered.

Most e-skins are made by layering an active nanomaterial (the sensor) on a stretchy surface that attaches to human skin. However, the connection between these layers is often too weak, which reduces the durability and sensitivity of the material; alternatively, if it is too strong, flexibility becomes limited, making it more likely to crack and break the circuit.

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