Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: wearables – Page 29

The wearable robot helps patients who are afraid of needles.

A recent study in Japan has revealed that a hand-held soft robot can improve the experience of patients while undergoing medical treatments, such as injections and other unpleasant therapies or immunizations.

Inspired by vaccinations during Covid

The research was inspired in part by the numerous needles people had to endure while being vaccinated against Covid-19. Some people had an aversion to these needles, which led to less people getting vaccinated, reducing the rates. Although there have been numerous studies explaining patients’ pain and anxiety during treatment, there have been few solutions studied or discussed to help patients.

Continue reading “A new robot can help with the fear of injections during medical treatments” | >

A collaborative research team co-led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has developed a wearable tactile rendering system, which can mimic the sensation of touch with high spatial resolution and a rapid response rate.

The team demonstrated its application potential in a braille display, adding the sense of touch in the metaverse for functions such as virtual reality shopping and gaming, and potentially facilitating the work of astronauts, deep-sea divers and others who need to wear thick gloves.

“We can hear and see our families over a long distance via phones and cameras, but we still cannot feel or hug them. We are physically isolated by space and time, especially during this long-lasting pandemic,” said Dr. Yang Zhengbao, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of CityU, who co-led the study.

Read more | >

A new technology that incorporates flexible fiber sensors into shoes has been developed by the National Nanotechnology Research Center (UNAM) at Bilkent University and is able to identify a number of health issues, including Parkinson’s disease and gait disorders.

Project manager Mustafa Ordu, who specialized in the production and characterization of fiber cables that can generate electricity for wearable devices, explained that the technology developed at UNAM is loaded with smart sensors that can monitor body movements and determine issues and diseases, with the potential to diagnose many health problems.

Further explaining the cutting-edge technology, he said that it can be woven into body wear or incorporated into footwear since by knitting these cables together like a type of threaded fabric, they can be incorporated into clothing as fibers. “This is what makes our team stand out among the existing laboratories in the world; we make smart sensors with flexible fiber and two-dimensional materials,” said Ordu.

Read more | >

At 200 times stronger than steel, graphene has been hailed as a super material of the future since its discovery in 2004. The ultrathin carbon material is an incredibly strong electrical and thermal conductor, making it a perfect ingredient to enhance semiconductor chips found in many electrical devices.

But while graphene-based research has been fast-tracked, the nanomaterial has hit roadblocks: in particular, manufacturers have not been able to create large, industrially relevant amounts of the material. New research from the laboratory of Nai-Chang Yeh, the Thomas W. Hogan Professor of Physics, is reinvigorating the graphene craze.

In two new studies, the researchers demonstrate that graphene can greatly improve required for wearable and flexible electronics such as smart health patches, bendable smartphones, helmets, large folding display screens, and more.

Read more | >

Inspired by living things from trees to shellfish, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin set out to create a plastic much like many life forms that are hard and rigid in some places and soft and stretchy in others. Their success—a first, using only light and a catalyst to change properties such as hardness and elasticity in molecules of the same type—has brought about a new material that is 10 times as tough as natural rubber and could lead to more flexible electronics and robotics.

The findings are published today in the journal Science.

“This is the first material of its type,” said Zachariah Page, assistant professor of chemistry and corresponding author on the paper. “The ability to control crystallization, and therefore the physical properties of the material, with the application of light is potentially transformative for wearable electronics or actuators in .”

Read more | >

What is limb regeneration and what species possess it? How is it achieved? What does this tell us about intelligence in biological systems and how could this information be exploited to develop human therapeutics? Well, in this video, we discuss many of these topics with Dr Michael Levin, Principal Investigator at Tufts University, whose lab studies anatomical and behavioural decision-making at multiple scales of biological, artificial, and hybrid systems.

Find Michael on Twitter — https://twitter.com/drmichaellevin.

Find me on Twitter — https://twitter.com/EleanorSheekey.

Support the channel.

Continue reading “Regeneration, Intelligence in Life & Memory — Dr Michael Levin” | >

Discarded electronic devices, such as cell phones, are a fast-growing source of waste. One way to mitigate the problem could be to use components that are made with renewable resources and that are easy to dispose of responsibly. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have created a prototype circuit board that is made of a sheet paper with fully integrated electrical components, and that can be burned or left to degrade.

Most small electronic devices contain that are made from glass fibers, resins and metal wiring. These boards are not easy to recycle and are relatively bulky, making them undesirable for use in point-of-care , environmental monitors or personal wearable devices.

One alternative is to use paper-based circuit boards, which should be easier to dispose of, less expensive and more flexible. However, current options require specialized paper, or they simply have traditional metal circuitry components mounted onto a sheet of paper. Instead, Choi and colleagues wanted to develop circuitry that would be simple to manufacture and that had all the electronic components fully integrated into the sheet.

Read more | >

A team of Penn State engineers has created a stretchy, wearable synaptic transistor that could turn robotics and wearable devices smarter. The device developed by the team works like neurons in the brain, sending signals to some cells and inhibiting others to enhance and weaken the devices’ memories.

The research was led by Cunjiang Yu, Dorothy Quiggle Career Development Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics and associate professor of biomedical engineering and of materials science and engineering.

The research was published in Nature Electronics.

Read more | >

Robotics and wearable devices might soon get a little smarter with the addition of a stretchy, wearable synaptic transistor developed by Penn State engineers. The device works like neurons in the brain to send signals to some cells and inhibit others in order to enhance and weaken the devices’ memories.

Led by Cunjiang Yu, Dorothy Quiggle Career Development Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics and associate professor of biomedical engineering and of and engineering, the team designed the synaptic transistor to be integrated in robots or wearables and use to optimize functions. The details were published Sept. 29 in Nature Electronics.

“Mirroring the human brain, robots and using the synaptic transistor can use its to ‘learn’ and adapt their behaviors,” Yu said. “For example, if we burn our hand on a stove, it hurts, and we know to avoid touching it next time. The same results will be possible for devices that use the synaptic transistor, as the artificial intelligence is able to ‘learn’ and adapt to its environment.”

Read more | >

The existing jacket can perform one logical operation per second, compared to the more than a billion operations per second typical of a home computer, says Preston. In practice, this means the jacket can only execute short command sequences. Due to the speed of the logic, along with some other engineering challenges, Zhang says he thinks it’ll take five to 10 years for these textile-based robots to reach commercial maturity.

In the future, Preston’s team plans to do away with the carbon dioxide canister, which is impractical. (You have to refill it like you would a SodaStream.) Instead, his team wants to just use ambient air to pump up the jacket. As a separate project, the team has already developed a foam insole for a shoe that pumps the surrounding air into a bladder worn around the waist when the wearer takes a step. They plan to integrate a similar design into the jacket.

Preston also envisions clothing that senses and responds to the wearer’s needs. For example, a sensor on a future garment could detect when the wearer is beginning to lift their arm and inflate without any button-pressing. “Based on some stimulus from the environment and the current state, the logic system can allow the wearable robot to choose what to do,” he says. We’ll be waiting for this fashion trend to blow up.

Read more | >