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Archive for the ‘wearables’ category: Page 51

Oct 21, 2016

Roving robots may roam your clothes

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, wearables

If you don’t like the thought of bugs crawling all over you, then you might not like one possible direction in which the field of wearable electronics is heading. Researchers from MIT and Stanford University recently showcased their new Rovables robots, which are tiny devices that roam up and down a person’s clothing – and yes, that’s as the clothing is being worn.

The centimeter-sized robots hang on by pinching the fabric between their wheels, with the physically-unconnected wheel on the underside of the material held against the others simply by magnetic attraction.

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Oct 20, 2016

Self-healable battery

Posted by in categories: energy, wearables

Electronics that can be embedded in clothing are a growing trend. However, power sources remain a problem. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, scientists have now introduced thin, flexible, lithium ion batteries with self-healing properties that can be safely worn on the body. Even after completely breaking apart, the battery can grow back together without significant impact on its electrochemical properties.

Existing lithium ion batteries for wearable electronics can be bent and rolled up without any problems, but can break when they are twisted too far or accidentally stepped on — which can happen often when being worn. This damage not only causes the battery to fail, it can also cause a safety problem: Flammable, toxic, or corrosive gases or liquids may leak out.

A team led by Yonggang Wang and Huisheng Peng has now developed a new family of lithium ion batteries that can overcome such accidents thanks to their amazing self-healing powers. In order for a complicated object like a battery to be made self-healing, all of its individual components must also be self-healing. The scientists from Fudan University (Shanghai, China), the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (South Korea), and the Samsung R&D Institute China, have now been able to accomplish this.

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Oct 5, 2016

Samsung Electronics to acquire artificial intelligence firm Viv, run

Posted by in categories: finance, mobile phones, robotics/AI, wearables

SEOUL Tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Thursday it is acquiring U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) platform developer Viv Labs Inc, a firm run by a co-creator of Apple Inc’s Siri voice assistant program.

Samsung said in a statement it plans to integrate the San Jose-based company’s AI platform, called Viv, into the Galaxy smartphones and expand voice-assistant services to home appliances and wearable technology devices.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

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Oct 5, 2016

Researchers say 2-D boron may be best for flexible electronics

Posted by in categories: nanotechnology, particle physics, wearables

Though they’re touted as ideal for electronics, two-dimensional materials like graphene may be too flat and hard to stretch to serve in flexible, wearable devices. “Wavy” borophene might be better, according to Rice University scientists.

The Rice lab of theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and experimental collaborators observed examples of naturally undulating, metallic , an atom-thick layer of boron, and suggested that transferring it onto an elastic surface would preserve the material’s stretchability along with its useful electronic properties.

Highly conductive graphene has promise for flexible electronics, Yakobson said, but it is too stiff for devices that also need to stretch, compress or even twist. But borophene deposited on a silver substrate develops nanoscale corrugations. Weakly bound to the silver, it could be moved to a flexible surface for use.

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Oct 5, 2016

New “Interscatter Communication” Could Let Your Implants Talk via Wi-Fi

Posted by in categories: internet, mobile phones, neuroscience, wearables

In Brief.

Interscatter communication has enabled the first Wi-Fi communication between implanted devices, wearables, and smart devices.

Researchers from the University of Washington have created a new form of communication that allows devices like credit cards, smart contact lenses, brain implants, and smaller wearable electronics to use Wi-Fi to talk to everyday devices like watches and smartphones. It’s called “interscatter communication,” and it works by using reflections to convert Bluetooth signals into Wi-Fi transmissions in the air that can be picked up by smart devices.

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Oct 3, 2016

Intel and Oakley pack a fitness tracker and AI coach into a pair of shades

Posted by in categories: privacy, robotics/AI, wearables

As useful as they are, wearable fitness trackers aren’t usually the height of fashion themselves, with many devices blending away out of sight on your wrist or ankle. Now Intel and Luxottica have teamed up to put a fitness tracker front and center on your face, stashing various biometric sensors and a voice-activated AI coach into a stylish, custom-designed pair of Oakley shades.

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Sep 30, 2016

New Quantum-Powered AI Exoskeleton Lets One Person Do the Work of Four

Posted by in categories: computing, cyborgs, quantum physics, robotics/AI, wearables

As the saying goes, “If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself,” and it seems that you’ll soon be able to get a lot more done using artificially intelligent, high-tech exoskeleton Kindred. It’s the product of a startup created by quantum computing company D-Wave’s founder Geordie Rose, and according to the venture capital firm funding Kindred, the device “uses AI-driven robotics so that one human worker can do the work of four.”

Based on a patent application, the wearable system is envisioned as a 1.2-meter tall humanoid that may be covered with synthetic skin. It will include a head-mounted display and an exo-suit of sensors and actuators that carries out everyday tasks.

Essentially, it looks something like Spider-Man’s Doctor Octopus on the outside, but on the inside, Kindred utilizes quantum computation, a way of information processing and storage that is much faster and more powerful than that used by conventional computers. Data “learned” by the suit can be taught to other robots, allowing those robots to then perform the tasks autonomously.

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Sep 24, 2016

Mind-Controlled Exoskeleton Could Help Paraplegic Children

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, robotics/AI, wearables

University of Houston researchers aim to leverage a new, noninvasive brain-machine interface system that taps into human brainwaves to control and command a wearable exoskeleton—a technology that could enable paraplegic kids to walk.

Kristopher Sturgis

Exoskeleton University of Houston

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Sep 12, 2016

Crocus Technology Introduces a Nano-Power TMR Digital Switch

Posted by in categories: computing, nanotechnology, wearables

Nice.


Crocus Technology, a leading developer of Tunneling Magnetoresistive Sensors (TMR) based on proprietary and patented Magnetic Logic Unit (MLU) technology, announces the availability of the CT51x digital switch, the first in a series of fully integrated digital sensors the company has launched. This family of devices accommodates a wide range of applications with larger air gaps, smaller magnetic fields, and significantly lower power consumption. The CT51x enables high-accuracy position detection, control and power switching functions with high sensitivity and reliability that system designers demand for the IoT, consumer and industrial applications.

“With ever increasing demand for intelligent sensing in smart products, the CT51x family of devices offers design-in flexibility and cost-savings for existing and emerging applications: IoT, wearables, appliances, smart meters, intelligent smart locks and other consumer products,” said Zack Deiri, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Crocus Technology. “The market is gravitating towards intelligent solid-state magnetic switches that provide higher reliability, faster frequency response, and extremely low power consumption for battery-powered applications in a smaller form factor, such as the CT51x.”

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Sep 1, 2016

Continuous Roll-process Technology for Transferring and Packaging Flexible Large-scale Integrated Circuits

Posted by in categories: computing, wearables

Luv this.


A research team led by Professor Keon Jae Lee from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and by Dr. Jae-Hyun Kim from the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) has jointly developed a continuous roll-processing technology that transfers and packages flexible large-scale integrated circuits (LSI), the key element in constructing the computer’s brain such as CPU, on plastics to realize flexible electronics.

Professor Lee previously demonstrated the silicon-based flexible LSIs using 0.18 CMOS (complementary metal -oxide semiconductor) process in 2013 (ACS Nano, “In Vivo Silicon-based Flexible Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Monolithically Encapsulated with Biocompatible Liquid Crystal Polymers”) and presented the work in an invited talk of 2015 International Electron Device Meeting (IEDM), the world’s premier semiconductor forum.

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