DGIST Professor Youngu Lee and Jeonbuk National University Professor Jaehyuk Lim successfully developed an ultra-sensitive, transparent, and flexible electronic skin mimicking the neural network in the human brain. — Applicable across different areas, including healthcare wearable devices and transparent display touch panels.
Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) are neuromorphic transistors made of carbon-based materials that combine both electronic and ionic charge carriers. These transistors could be particularly effective solutions for amplifying and switching electronic signals in devices designed to be placed on the human skin, such as smart watches, trackers that monitor physiological signals and other wearable technologies.
In contrast with conventional neuromorphic transistors, OECTs could operate reliably in wet or humid environments, which would be highly advantageous for both medical and wearable devices. Despite their potential, most existing OECTs are based on stiff materials, which can reduce the comfort of wearables and thus hinder their large-scale deployment.
Researchers at the University of Hong Kong have developed a new wearable device based on stretchable OECTs that can both perform computations and collect signals from the surrounding environment. Their proposed system, presented in a paper published in Nature Electronics, could be used to realize in-sensor edge computing on a flexible wearable device that is comfortable for users.
In the age of technology everywhere, we are all too familiar with the inconvenience of a dead battery. But for those relying on a wearable healthcare device to monitor glucose, reduce tremors, or even track heart function, taking time to recharge can pose a big risk.
For the first time, researchers in Carnegie Mellon University have shown that a healthcare device can be powered using body heat alone. By combining a pulse oximetry sensor with a flexible, stretchable, wearable thermoelectric energy generator composed of liquid metal, semiconductors, and 3D printed rubber, the team has introduced a promising way to address battery life concerns.
Researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa have unveiled a new technique that could make the manufacture of wearable health sensors more accessible and affordable.
The wearable…
A new technology that uses light waves to measure activity in babies’ brains has provided the most complete picture to date of functions like hearing, vision and cognitive processing outside a conventional brain scanner, in a new study led by researchers at UCL and Birkbeck.
One of the drawbacks of fitness trackers and other wearable devices is that their batteries eventually run out of juice. But what if in the future, wearable technology could use body heat to power itself?
UW researchers have developed a flexible, durable electronic prototype that can harvest energy from body heat and turn it into electricity that can be used to power small electronics, such as batteries, sensors or LEDs. This device is also resilient — it still functions even after being pierced several times and then stretched 2,000 times.
The team detailed these prototypes in a paper published in Advanced Materials (“3D Soft Architectures for Stretchable Thermoelectric Wearables with Electrical Self-Healing and Damage Tolerance”).
This metamaterial-based e-skin integrates multiple sensory inputs, including pre-contact detection and self-powered operation, advancing wearable and robotic technologies.
But what if you’re a manufacturer without the budget, bandwidth or time to invest in advanced digital transformation right now? You can still take practical steps to move forward. Start with fundamental data collection and analytic tools to lay the groundwork. Leveraging visibility solutions like barcode scanning, wearables or other basic Internet of Things (IoT) devices can help monitor machines and provide insights and improvements.
Quality is the final piece of the equation. Once you’re further down the path to transformation, implement visibility solutions and augment and upskill workers with technology to optimize quality. To drive quality even further, add advanced automation solutions. You don’t have to boil the ocean on your digital transformation journey—take it one step at a time from wherever you’re starting.
Most manufacturers (87%) in Zebra’s study agree it’s a challenge to pilot new technologies or move beyond the pilot phase, yet they plan to advance digital maturity by 2029. With the right technology tools and solutions in place to advance visibility, augment workers and optimize quality, they will get there.
A sweat-powered wearable has the potential to make continuous, personalized health monitoring as effortless as wearing a Band-Aid. Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed an electronic finger wrap that monitors vital chemical levels—such as glucose, vitamins, and even drugs—present in the same fingertip sweat from which it derives its energy.
The advance was published Sept. 3 in Nature Electronics by the research group of Joseph Wang, a professor in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at UC San Diego.
The device, which wraps snugly around the finger, draws power from an unlikely source—the fingertip’s sweat. Fingertips, despite their small size, are among the body’s most prolific sweat producers, each packed with over a thousand sweat glands. These glands can produce 100 to 1,000 times more sweat than most other areas of the body, even during rest.
A wearable ‘smart’ choker for speech recognition has the potential to redefine the field of silent speech interface (SSI), say researchers—thanks to embedded ultrasensitive textile strain sensor technology.
Where verbal communication is hindered, such as in locations with lots of background noise or where an individual has an existing speech impairment, SSI systems are a cutting-edge solution, enabling verbal communication without vocalization. As such, it is a type of electronic lip-reading using human-computer interaction.
In new research, led by the University of Cambridge, an overlying structured graphene layer is applied to an integrated textile strain sensor for robust speech recognition performance, even in noisy environments.
